Dear Evie,
I’ve missed two months now of these “monthly” letters and I really have no excuse other than that I just can’t seem to find the words to describe you these days. You are beautiful and charming. You are so full of life and attitude. One minute you have me in tears laughing so hard and the next minute all you want to do is snuggle up on my lap like we did for hours at a time when you were an infant. You make my heart swell and hurt in such a good way.
You are growing up so dang fast. Some days it seems like you are one going on fifteen. You still let me pick your clothes out in the morning, but heaven help me if I try to put the wrong pair of shoes on you. You will kick and scream and fight until I give up and let you choose the ones you want. As long as something is covering your feet it doesn’t really matter much though. You just love your shoes and even though you can’t manage to put your own shoes on yet, I keep finding you walking around in your brother’s. I’ve also found you walking around trying to wear a t-shirt as pants because you are trying to dress yourself already. There were even a few days when I had to laugh because you started asking for a “bow” in your hair every night before bed and refused to lay down until you had one. It seems I may have a little miniature diva on my hands.
You talk all the time now. You can still only say one or two words at a time, but girl you have a lot of words for your age. Your favorite word? Shoes. (You may have to get a job when you’re 3 to keep up with your shoe habit.) I can’t possibly list all of the words you say, but the most common are: shoes, mommy, mama, daddy, zach, bubba, bopbop, cat, bye bye, more, night night, outside, belly (while you lift your shirt to show it off), hello, hi, ball, baby, bath, potty, yes, no, and cup. I know I’m forgetting some because you’re always spouting off new words. You try to repeat pretty much anything we say, even if you can’t get the sounds quite right.
You are getting more and more social all the time. You love your friends at day care and your cousins, but you love your big brother even more. You want to play with him all the time, which means I hear a lot of “No Sis!” coming from the playroom and living room when you start messing with his toys. Most of the time he ends up giving up the toys and playing with you instead. When he does pay attention to you the two of you giggle like crazy and it is the best sound in the world.
It’s been fun watching you develop your motor skills lately as well. You’ve been walking since just after your first birthday, but now you love to dance as well. In the last week or so, I’ve noticed you trying to jump. Every kid does it, but I think it is the cutest thing when you try to jump and your feet don’t leave the ground. You are so proud of yourself every time even though you aren’t going anywhere. Your fine motor skills are improving as well. You have started picking up crayons and coloring and you are doing much better feeding yourself with a fork and spoon.
Along with all of the growing, you’ve been cutting teeth like crazy. You cut all four of your 1st year molars and all four incisors within a few weeks of each other. In between cutting all of those teeth, you somehow got a bacterial infection in your skin, got a cold, and a horrible sinus infection that caused a week long fever. You were a pretty miserable girl for a couple weeks, but once we got through the antibiotics you were back to your normal goofy self.
Baby girl, you are just so much fun. You are so lively and funny and just perfect in every way (except for maybe your sudden obsession with princesses). I can spend hours just tickling you and giving you zerberts on your belly and you never get tired of it. You just ask for “more” and lift your shirt to show me your belly. You bring so much joy and love to our family. I can’t imagine a more perfect fit. I love you, my little monkey!
Love always,
Mama