Twenty Eight Months!

My little Baby Bowen,

Oh, how it makes me weary to type "twenty eight!" You're such a little girl right now, and it's so startling to realize how horribly quickly this is all going. You've grown and changed this month, and I would say that the biggest leaps and bounds are coming out in your personality. You know what you want, little one, and watching you get it is a joy.

This month your communication continues to increase at an astounding rate. You love narrating what you're doing, and I get a constant stream of, "Mama? Me yawn. Now me yawn again." And just as often as "Mama? Me sneeze now. Funny! Me sneeze!" You often ask me "Mama okay?" and I'm always happy when you answer "Me okay too!" Recently when people ask you your name you say, "Me, Bono!" which you seem to like a lot better than your actual name. Lately I hear you parroting ourselves back at us, and yesterday while blowing bubbles you said, "Good job, Mama!" You're absolutely adorable, little one. You're chatting from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep, and communicating with you in this way, finally, is amazing.

We've had a lot of fun this month, baby. You've started to really pretend lately. You love it when I set you up on the counter to spend time "making coffee." You pretend to make coffee in our bodum and then have everyone sample for their approval. You always happily explain, "Coffee yummy now!" We've also been spending a fair bit of time outside, getting the garden ready for the season. When I was turning the garden beds you fell in love with "wormies" and now every time we walk by them you ask if you can play with wormie or if she's sleeping. If I manage to find you a worm you love holding it and parading it around the yard, showing it the various attractions. The other day you gave wormie a bath, which perhaps wasn't the best idea on my part. When you get tired of holding them, you exclaim that wormie is hungry, so she must go back in the garden bed. I'm working hard to make you fearless about the little critters we cohabitate with, and aside from a little incident where your father said, "Ewwww!" about a spider, we see to be very on track. Spending time outside has been a lot of fun this past month, and you really love contributing to our work there, whether it be digging around with the tiny spade or collecting rocks in a bucket. It's going to be a wonderful gardening  season, Baby Bowen!

This month you finished up your first round of swimming lessons, and you'll start again in a few weeks. Watching your confidence grow in the pool has been amazing, and I'm so proud of what a water baby you are. Now you're much more open to getting your face wet, and even blow bubbles underwater! We're also finishing up the last week of music class, and then we'll only have one more round before baby brother comes. We've also been spending a lot of time walking around the neighbourhood and walking to our local park. Before you were only into the swings, but now the slide is by far your favourite. Your favourite expression when we're there is, "ONE MORE TIME!!!" When we walk around you're great at knowing to hold hands with me on the street, but that you have free reign over the sidewalk. I absolutely cherish these little times of ours and days that are trivial and mundane to most mean the world to me. This month you've also had your first dentist visit, in which you did really well! We'd talked about how you were going to open your mouth. You were ready to go when it was time, and answered with a resounding "Yes!" when he asked if you had been looking at pictures of alligators in preparation for your visit. It's very cute that you're also going to the dentist your dad went to when he was little! Another big hit lately is drinking out of water fountains. I'd never imagined what a pleasure it is for you, but any time we're near one you seem to gravitate towards it instantly. You always end your water fountain visits with an ecstatic, "Water's yummy!"

I think a lot about when you become a big sister, my baby. I know you'll be an excellent one, but I also realize how hard it will be at first. It melts my heart when we're leaving the house and I hear you say, "It's okay, Wichies," because I know this kindness will carry onto your little brother. But I also think about how rocked your world will be. You've been my everything for your whole entire life, and now suddenly you'll have to share this time and space with someone else. I know that in the long run it's such a precious gift for you to grow up with a friend, but I think that it might be tough for us all in the short term as we get adjusted to being a bigger family. I never want you to feel left out or to think you're not as precious as before, because my baby, nothing can ever change how much I love you.

Baby monkey, I'll never be able to express how much I love you and how much you've changed me. We have our long days and we have our hard days, but most of all we have our precious days. This time with you is something I never take for granted and something that I always want to remember.

Happy twenty eight months, my Bowen Naomi!

I love you forever,

-Your Mama