Dear Kate,

As I start writing this, I can hear you opening the closet in our living room, dragging out a big plastic container that holds your dress-up clothes, and fumbling with the latches. You haven't figured them out yet, so in a minute, you're going to call for me to help you, and thus will begin the first part of a new morning ritual you and I have developed in recent days: Arguing over your clothing.

I sort of thought this was the kind of thing that would happen when you were approaching adolescence and wanted to wear skirts that are too short, but here we are, at two years old, and you'd be stiff competition for any 13-year-old pouting in a department store dressing room. Our conflict is about what you want to get up every day and wear: Your diaper, a pink mesh tutu, white dress socks, and black dress shoes. Sometimes you want to layer a red and white polka dotted skirt over the tutu, but most days it's just you and the tutu.These are adorable dress-up things, and it would really be fine with me for you to wear them, except that Kate, it's almost November. Yesterday, we woke up to absolutely freezing cold weather with rain and wind. Today it snowed violently for an hour. No matter what I do it's hard to keep our house warm enough. I've got on layers of sweaters and socks, and here you are, running around half-nude, like you're on a Caribbean island. You will not discuss the possibility of putting the tutu on over some warmer clothes. You do not want to hear about these things called "pants." And you are very particular about how the tutu must be arranged. The ribbon must be in the front. The flowers must face a certain way. You will not tolerate any irregularities of the tutu. It is like living with a tiny obsessive fashion designer.

Last night we had a breakthrough. Your Grammy Wachdorf sent you a box containing two super-cute knit dresses with matching footless tights, and you love them so much that you actually consented to letting me put one of them on you this morning. As of right now I'm still typing and you haven't come in to make your usual tutu-related demands. Maybe these dresses will save me from insanity and you from hypothermia. If so, I owe your Grammy big time. But these little episodes really just point to the big trend of the last two months, and that is You are a Big Girl. You want to Do It Yourself. You actually say that phrase all the time, except no one would ever know, because you pronounce it "I tay it!" (I do it.) From what I can tell, all this means is that you're right where you should be developmentally, and that's good. I want you to learn how to do things. You have a pretty independent personality even if this weren't the phase you would be in by default right now, so it's no surprise. But that doesn't mean it isn't frustrating sometimes. Learning to do things means doing them reeeeaaaaalllly slowly. Sometimes we're in a hurry. Sometimes we actually have to be somewhere at a certain point in time and space. This means nothing to you. You still want to put on your own socks (No Mommy! I tay it!), and it takes forever. I'm taking a lot of deep breaths these days. Counting to ten an awful lot. Trying to leave plenty of time for you to do things. Praying that I don't actually burst a blood vessel.

While our conflict level is definitely up this fall, so is how much real communication we can have, because you are talking so much. You never stop, even when I'm not in the room. You're puttering along, having a conversation with imaginary people about imaginary scenarios, and in those unguarded moments, it's been funny to me to hear my own verbal patterns parroted from your mouth. Apparently, when I talk to you, I end with the word OK a lot. As in "We're going to put on some pants now, OK?" I never realized I do this, but now I know that I do, because when you are playing, you end most of your sentences with "OK?" I also call you "Honey" a lot, especially when you're hurt. A few weeks ago, your daddy and I moved a dresser in our bedroom, and for the next two nights when I got up to go to the bathroom during the night, I ran straight into its corner because I forgot it was there. I got a massive bruise on my leg for that bit of clumsiness, and when you saw it, you said "Oh HONey! I get some me-cine. (medicine). Alll betta. (All better.)" You actually went and got a little bottle of lotion and pretended to be putting in on my bruise too. It was hilarious.

Here you are "reading" Harry Potter to Dangles. Or, as you call it "Parry Hotter." I'm reading it to your dad in the evenings, so you had to get in on the act. You are very dramatic when you read out loud.

Since I've talked about how you're being difficult in one area, I should probably be fair and mention an area of your life that you're suddenly being amazingly un-difficult about. Ready? Here it is: You're eating. Eating food. Willingly. And lots of it. I don't know what to do with myself I'm so surprised. It isn't that before now you haven't liked food. You like it fine. You just don't eat very much of it, and that is why when we go to your pediatrician for checkups, I don't even ask them to tell me what "percentile" you fall into on the growth chart anymore. After years of conditioning to think of numbers in terms of academic grades, it just makes me feel like a failure, and I worry that your doctor is going to burst into the room and demand to know why I have been denying you food. She never does that, of course. At all your checkups, we have the same two conversations. The first one is about how it's OK for you to not to be very big if you're gaining weight and not losing it. The second one is about how it's also OK that your head circumference continues to outstrip your overall growth. Seriously, it's kind of comical. I believe I may have recently used the phrase "Onion on a toothpick" when describing to your Aunt Hannah what you look like when your hair gets wet. Sorry about that. Clearly, right now you're having a growth spurt, and I'm having to constantly tell myself that this is what it is. A growth spurt. Not the Glorious New Normal where you eat like a human being and not a bird. This too shall pass. But in the meantime, we're getting a huge kick out of giving you food and watching you actually consume it. It's like a bizarre new TV show in our kitchen. "Kate Eats an Entire Turkey Sandwich." We are riveted.

The other thing I can see coming out in you that is allllllll me alllllll over again is the fact that you are pretty bossy. Yes. It was probably your lot in life anyway, since you'll be an oldest girl in birth order, and I think that just predisposes a person to lots of babysitting and the overpowering urge to tell people what to do. But there's no denying that you got it from me, and your daddy is having a big laugh over it, when he isn't busy trying to find things you took from him by force. Last weekend after we came back from Hannah and Daniel's wedding, we were having a lazy Saturday morning, and you piled up in our bed, where we were drinking coffee and talking. At first, you were content to sit between us and listen, but it didn't take long for you to start ordering the universe as you saw fit. You had to hold the plate with the bagels on it. You wanted to hold a coffee cup too but were overruled on that one. You wanted your legs covered up with the blankets, and directed me on how to arrange them for you. Then you turned to Dan, grabbed his pillow, and said "Daddy own pillow" as you took his pillow away from him. Yes. You get your own pillow, father. I need this one. That about covers your approach to most things these days. So we're talking a lot about sharing and asking for things instead of just taking them. It's slow going. You don't want anything to do with it.

But whether you want it or not, the world of sharing and considering others is coming to you, Kate. I've buried the lead a bit here, but the other big piece of news from the last couple of months is that you've got a baby brother or sister on the way. (At 14 weeks along, everything looks good.) He or she will be here in April, and we couldn't be more excited. I'm not sure what you understand about this news. You talk about the baby in the tummy a lot and when we pray for the baby, you reach over and pat my stomach. You consistently refer to the baby as "baby sister," which makes me nervous that you might not react so well should our new arrival turn out to be a boy. You notice other people's babies a lot, but I know that you can't really comprehend what all this is going to mean. I'm not sure I've got my head wrapped around it either, frankly. Two kids. What in the world are we going to do with two kids? I feel like I just figured out how to manage with one.

When I was expecting you, I spent a lot of time thinking about how you would change my life. I didn't know you, so I couldn't really think very concretely about what you would be like. Maybe it's because the new baby is such an unknown to me at this point, but this time I mostly spend a lot of time thinking about how he or she is going to change your life. While I know that initially, there is bound to be some struggle to get used to sharing our attention (not to mention your toys) my main emotion when I think about this is excitement for you. You're going to have a sibling! You have no idea what good news this is. Kate, as I've become an adult and my own siblings have too, I have found that my brothers and sisters are some of my favorite people in the world. There is a very powerful connection that comes from growing up in the same family if it's a loving family, and I want that for you. I want it for this new child. So that's why we're getting on the roller coaster again. This time around, I know what we're signing up for. I know now that there is almost no force of nature that can equal the chaos a newborn can bring into your life. I know what sleep deprivation is like. But what I know this time around that I couldn't have known before is how much we're going to love this new child. I know that because I know how much we love you. So here we go.

Dear April Baby: We love you already and can't wait to meet you. Grow healthy and strong. You have a lot of people waiting to meet you.

Love,

Mommy

This is a picture we emailed to our families in August to tell them the big news. Yes, August. I've been holding out on you, Internet.