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