I really do apologize for how long the blog was dormant this month. Dan has been traveling a lot for business, and then Kate and I went on a trip to Mississippi, where I was convinced I would find time to blog her newsletter what with the boundless energy I'd have after traveling alone with a toddler across the country. Hahahaha. I crack myself up. That so did not happen. We're home now, so here's a start at getting caught up.

Dear Kate,

In a month you are going to be two. Some days I can hardly believe that. I look at pictures of you when we first brought you home from the hospital, and I wonder where that baby went who didn't even fill up a whole sofa cushion and would sleep in broad daylight. Then there are days when I can totally buy the idea of you as a two-year-old, because you are being very, very two right now. As in now I understand the phrase 'The Terrible Twos.' I don't think it's an accurate description of who you are most of the time, but some days it fits. Really fits.

One good example is your recent insistence on directing your own fashion choices. This isn't entirely new, since you've had opinions about clothing since you were, I don't know, born. Lately though, you have zeroed in on one particular item of clothing and are demanding to wear it every day. Kate, this item of clothing is a white Sunday dress. White with green and blue polka dots. You love anything with polka dots right now, so that makes your swimsuit, your sun hat and this WHITE DRESS your favorite things ever. Did I mention that the dress is white yet? Because it is, and it is so impossible to keep clean. You request it first thing every morning and by 9 a.m. it looks like you've been using it to wipe tables in a diner. I have dumped so much stain treater on this dress and washed it so many times in the last month that I fully expect it to fall apart in my hands any minute. I have no idea what I am going to do when you outgrow this dress, which is actually an 18 month old size and only fits you because of your status as a total shrimp. The only redeemable thing about this obsession of yours is the fact that you call the polka dot dress the "Do-Da-Dop Dress" and this is so cute that I think my head may actually explode the next time you say it. You will notice that the dress appears in many of the photos attached to this letter. That is because you won't take it off.

Then there are the shoes. I hesitate to even address this publicly because it's so gross, but I think it's important to establish that you have declared free agency in regards to your outfits, lest anyone think I am just refusing to buy you adequate clothing. Basically, you've been wearing the same shoes every day since late June. One day I noticed that overnight it seemed you had outgrown all your shoes. So off we went to get some new ones, and after some looking around I found a really comfortable-looking pair of pink sandals that you loved and which were on sale. I figured they would get us through the next couple of days until I could get you some real shoes. Well. You were so instantly in love with these shoes that you wore them out of the store and since then they have only left your feet when I have forced you to remove them. This includes Sundays, when you refuse to wear the cute white patent leather Sunday shoes in your closet and instead pair these increasingly-filthy glorified flip flops with frilly Sunday dresses. If they were a more sensible color, it wouldn't matter, but they're pink, or at least they were when we bought them. Now they are a muddy pinkish gray and because you are not a big fan of socks, they are starting to smell just awful. And nothing we do can convince you to wear anything else.

It is good timing for you that your sudden interest in providing very specific directions about your clothing coincides with a major leap in your verbal skills. I don't know what happened this month, but suddenly you have words for everything. You pick up three or four new words a day. One morning I went to get you out of bed, and you asked to "Go in da chitchen" (kitchen). I had no idea you knew how to say kitchen, but this is how it is with you lately. I find out you know something because you start talking about it. You especially love to know people's names. We spend a lot of time going over the names of everyone we know whose name you know. This is turning out to be a lot of people, Kate. I imagine that for instance our friend Mrs. Summer, Mother of Heidi and Baby Elsa, might be considerably freaked out to learn how much time we spend talking about her in the privacy of our own home. Not that we say anything meaningful. We just say "And Ms. Summa! And Heidi! And Baby Elsa!" before we move on to other people in this weird roll call you're conducting.

We're actually starting to have real conversations now, not that these always go like I'd want them to. On a recent trip to Trader Joe's, we were pulling into the parking lot and I started telling you about what I expected you to do when we were in the store. I admit I was feeling pretty smug with myself for anticipating what might be a problem. Surely if I just told you what I expected, you would behave angelically. So here is the little chat we had.

Me: Kate, we're going to go into Trader Joe's now, and when we're in the store, I need you to sit in the cart and listen to mommy and obey when I ask you to do something. Are you going to obey Mommy?

You: Nope!

I tried to take comfort in the knowledge that at least you tell me the truth, but it was hard to put that one down in the "win" category.

A not-so-cute manifestation of your two-ness is a recent resurgence of your always-present sleep problems. I say "always present," because although you go through huge stretches of time where you sleep really well, I know that you are not a naturally good sleeper no matter how much I wish you were. Oddly, I am still not really able to laugh about that one time when you didn't sleep through the night until after you were a year old. You've improved so much since then that I am spoiled now, so when you decided a couple of weeks ago that going to bed for naps and nighttime without protesting about it for up to an hour was highly overrated, I was taken off guard. This happened during a business trip of your dad's. That is when everything happens. It continued through a recent trip you and I took to Mississippi to visit with family, and seems to have died down, but you never really know.

I bring this up not so much because it is really the most important thing about this month, but more because it connects with another thing I'm learning through being your parent this month: Parenting is a lot about letting go. I'm sure the parents of young adults would tell me I don't know the first thing about real letting go, but I'm trying to start small in the hopes that one day when you're a grownup I'll have some practice in standing back and letting you be who you are. So if you want to wear the same dress forty-bajillion times, fine. It isn't hurting you, and it isn't worth fighting over. As for the shoes, I just try to sneak in your room at night, pry them off your feet (yes, sometimes you sleep with them on) and run them through the washing machine too, mostly because they really do smell bad.

That's a harder attitude for me to have when we're talking about something that does inconvenience me, like an upheaval in your sleep patterns. It isn't that I don't do the work I know it takes to get you back to normal when you go through a rough patch with sleep or discipline issues. I do. It's just that I'm learning that it's going to be a lot easier on everyone if I can let go of how much I want everything to be predictable and simple and fixed once and for all. When I succeed in doing that, I am able to notice each day how much fun it is to be your mom instead of just dwelling on what's hard about it. I know the fun is what I'm going to remember most about this time when you're all grown up anyway. And at the rate you're growing up now, I know it's all going to seem like yesterday.

I love you so much,

Mommy

Moment 1:

Tonight Dan, Kate and I piled into the car for an impromptu trip to Barnes and Noble, or as Kate refers to it "choo choo train." She calls it this because in the children's section, there is indeed a model train table where children can play. On any given day you will see lots of moms chilling out with lattes and a book or two while the kids play with the train. I have no idea how many books this actually sells, but it gives me an undying love for Barnes and Noble. There is even a Starbucks inside. Go massive corporations!

Tonight we just had an hour or so to kill before Kate's bed time, so we took off and left the house while having a conversation that was absorbing enough that we didn't really do any of our usual parental pre-flight safety checks. We did make it out the door with Kate's monkey, and the pacifier, and her sippy cup. What we didn't have was a diaper bag. Or a diaper. Or so much as a single diaper wipe.

I think all you veteran parents out there know what happened next.

But maybe someone here is unfamiliar with how Murphy's Law works when applied to parenting. Or maybe y'all are just smarter than us and have therefore never let this happen. Either way, in case you're in the dark at this point, let me spell it out for you: If you leave the house without a diaper or a wipe and go to a public location your child will (not "might" -- definitely WILL) have the world's nastiest dirty diaper within five minutes of your arrival at the aforementioned public place.

I'm not going to tell you the gory details of how I totally failed to handle this little crisis. Suffice it to say that was the shortest trip I have ever paid to a bookstore, and we left with Kate announcing to everyone we passed "No panties! No panties!" I hope no one understood her, and I feel I owe a personal apology to whomever had to empty the trash can in the ladies' room.

Moment 2:

Lately, Kate is getting very aware of our surroundings. This is good in that when I say things to her like "Go into your bedroom and get me your shoes," she does it. It's complicated in that when we drive places, she starts trying to guess what we're going to do based on what part of town we're in. Tonight, we exited the Interstate onto Louisiana Boulevard, which happens to be the location of three places we go a lot as a family: McAlister's (Where Kate always has macaroni and cheese) adjacent to the water fountain at ABQ Uptown (where Kate runs around and screams "Water! Water!") and across the street from Barnes and Noble (alternate name of "choo choo train" established earlier in this post.)

We were not even off the exit yet, and the following comments came from the back seat:

Kate: Choo choo train!
Dan: What is she saying?
Me: Oh, just wait.
Kate: Cheese! Mac and Cheese! Water! Water!
Me: Yeah. We can't drive over here any more.

Moment 3:

I wrote Kate's newlsetter late this month and so it reflects what was going on during the actual 23rd month of her life regarding her fixation on these awful, smelly pink shoes she has. What I didn't write about, because it's a development of the last few days, is that she has actually made room in her life for another pair of shoes. They are a pair of pink plaid ballet flats, and she loves them mostly because they are just a little bit too big for her feet, and if she stands just so and works really hard at it, she can put them on herself. To distinguish these shoes from the stinky ones, which she calls "pink shoes," I taught her the phrase "plaid shoes." After all, that is what they are. Plaid. Plaid, the word that starts with a P and ends in a D. The word that does not sound at all like an expletive. Right? Except that this morning, when Kate started asking for these shoes, the word that came out of her mouth was a word that starts with "F" and is generally reserved for episodes of the Sopranos. Yes, that word. Crystal clear.

Since Kate has never heard that word in her life, I know this is just a somewhat horrifying mispronunciation. Still, since she totally thinks that's the name for these shoes, I'm doing some emergency speech therapy and trying to get her to say "plaid" correctly. She pronounces each separate part of the word perfectly. Pah. La. Duh. And then when I ask her to put them together, there it is. The Cuss Word of all Cuss Words. When I cringe, she looks at me like "What? I just want my shoes!" Oh goodness.

Given my child's new propensity for cursing like a sailor, announcing the status of her undergarments and demanding to be fed macaroni and cheese every time we drive East on the freeway, I am starting to think we may have to stay home for a while. Dan made me an emergency diaper and wipe packet to keep in the car so the Epic Diaper won't be repeated. But still. I just think you should all visit us at home until we're more fit for public consumption.

When Kate and I were in Mississippi last week, my amazing and talented soon-to-be brother-in-law Daniel Meigs very graciously took some photos of Kate in honor of her upcoming second birthday. This shoot was, I imagine, a bit more challenging than when he first photographed her, since she was still in the womb for that one. And the second time she was just a three month old baby, so she couldn't do much protesting. This was a different story. She's almost two now, and she cannot be bothered to sit still for photos. I should know, based on how many hopelessly blurred photos I have taken of her.

Daniel should get some kind of combined photography/athletics award for these photos, because towards the end of the shoot, Kate started running away from us while we were trying to get her to smile and stand still. Just took off down the driveway and never looked back. Daniel ran after her in the sweltering August heat and kept shooting while she squealed and laughed and kicked up dust. Those of you who have been to my parent's house know that's a loooooong driveway. What a pro.

Photos like this are a real gift to me as a mother. It's a rare moment when I can actually just look at Kate, even though I live my life in constant contact with her. Even when we were taking these photos, I was mostly focused on getting her to look at the camera, smile and stop stepping on ants. I knew the pictures would be great, but then when I saw them, I got all choked up. It's amazing how a really good picture can show you what you see all the time in a way that makes you realize how breath-taking it truly is.

Daniel is here and here for when you need to see more of his work. If any of you New Mexicans want to fly him out to do photos for you, I'll provide his lodging. Maybe he could bring my sister with him. I'm just saying.