two years old

Dear Lena - you are two!  Finally!  You have been waiting for this day for a long time now.  Happy birthday is one of your favorite songs that you have known for quite some time now so when November began and we had to get through Auntie Ali's birthday, then Mommy's birthday, then Ethan's, then Uncle Mike's and Grandma's, and finally yours, well it took a lot of patience on your end.  You would keep saying, "My birthday . . . coming up?"  You even learned to say it was in two weeks, a few days, etc.  And then it finally arrived!  More on the celebrations later.

At two years old, you are beyond what we could have ever expected.  Your communication skills amaze us - you love conversing and you love learning new words.  We have conversations in the car and we think you cannot even hear of us and all of a sudden, you start repeating words that we are saying and asking questions.  When you say things, you will keep saying them until those words are acknowledged, and sometimes even after that, you still keep repeating them again and again.  You have a fascination with people's names - you like talking about people, learning their names, learning who they are, etc.  You like to know where people are.  You also continue to be fascinated with things that move - buses, fire trucks, cars, planes, etc.  You love to point out the different vehicles you see on the way to and from school.  You love the train set you got for your birthday, naturally, and all of the Thomas trains.  You like talking about the weather and the time of day - you ask what time it is, you ask if it is dark out, you ask about the moon.  You like talking about colors and noting when two things are the same color - you say, "same same."

You continue to love gym class and music class.  Your favorite activity at gym class is jumping on the trampoline.  You are good at listening and following along with what the teachers tell you to do.  You do seem to be a little more into physical activity lately, particularly running.  You like to yell, "Uno, dos, tres, go!" and then run across the hallway back and forth.  Music class continues to be an enjoyment - you now know many of the songs and sing them in the car and request certain songs.  You speak up more in class now as you are getting to be more comfortable.  You like to sing generally and we find you singing to yourself a lot more now and knowing parts of so many songs.

You also seem to still like playing with babies and now know how to rock them and pat them - something your teachers have been helping you with in preparation for the arrival of your baby sibling.  Your teachers have very high praises for you.  You are a well-loved member of the class and you continually amaze them with how far along you are.  And you still love going to school.  You never get upset when I leave you and while most of the time, you are delighted to see me at the end of the day, there are certainly days when you are more into what you are doing than greeting me, which is of course pretty nice.

These are the last few days we will have as a family of three and we feel so blessed that we were able to spend two years entirely devoted to watching you grow from an infant to a little girl.  Happy birthday to you!