Suddenly, you can read numbers. This came about suddenly and dramatically — one day you couldn’t tell a 1 from a 0 and the next you could identify the scrawliest, upside-down 7 for what it was. At first I thought you were just on a lucky guessing streak, but then, you never missed. This hasn’t been something we’ve been trying to teach you; you just picked it up on your own, and it’s kind of miraculous to watch. And it’s clear this new ability excites you as much as it does us. “That’s a five!” you said, super proud that you’ve finally connected the synapses that had previous been ever so slightly out of sync.

Letters, on the other hand, remain a mystery. You know your alphabet song, more or less (it starts with “A, B, B, B…” but then settles in), but recognizing their shapes is a whole different ball of wax. At one point this month you seemed to know how to spell your name — Papa asked for a letter, to which you said “E”, then “Z”, then “R” (then “E” again), but it’s a feat you’ve never been able to repeat, so I fear it was either a lucky shot or something buried in your subconscious that rose for a quick moment and then burrowed back down.

That actually happens a lot. Things you’ve been exposed to — melodies, lyrics, or lines from books — will seem to have no impression for weeks, and then suddenly one day we’ll hear you in the back seat saying them out loud to yourself.

On a cold Christmas Eve, when the whole city was shut down, we took a trip down to the Museum of Science and Industry. We expected you to bliss out on all the trains, and we were not disappointed. You seemed idly interested in the decommissioned actual trains, but it was the expansive model train layout that really melted your heart. Once your eyes latched onto that, there was no peeling you away. You could have stayed there for hours. You did stay there for hours. We tried pulling you into the colorful, whimsical Dr. Seuss exhibit, and you lasted all of 10 minutes before you began wondering, “What the heck am I doing NOT LOOKING AT TRAINS?!” So in other words, we’ll be going back.

Your other obsession: Magna-tiles. You first encountered them at a party where some big kids were playing with them. They let you into their circle and taught you how they worked, and you were hooked. A week later cousin Caroline generously gave you a set. In one week of playing, you must have advanced three grade levels in geometry, color, shape and architecture. You say things like “Look at me! I’m making a sailboat.” Or “This is a house for the horses!” You are almost scarily smart with them, and it makes me so excited to see what you will do with Legos, once we’re past the choking hazard phase and can bring them into the house.

There was one more star toy this month: the big box. When a co-worker got something delivered in a 3’x 3’ x 3’ box, I had a hunch it would be a big hit at home. I was more right than I knew. That thing enraptured both you and your sister for hours over the course of a few weeks. It was basically a cardboard babysitter. You hid in it, you threw your guys in it, you drew on it, you poked holes in it, you may have travelled through time in it for all I know.

It hasn’t been all smiles and roses, though. We’ve encountered a side of you that, frankly, is more confusing than anything, and leaves us at a loss. You have this tendency to push your sister over and crush her. It appears to be an act of love, not aggression, but despite our pleadings — and her wailing — you aren’t getting the message that it ain’t right. It doesn’t seem to be borne of a lack of attention, as you’ll do it even while we’re interacting with you. This is the first real test we’ve had about bad behavior that has left us totally confused. I’m sure it won’t be the last. In the meanwhile, Z is getting a crash course in younger-sister-hood.

The other big drama was my fault. We went sledding in Galena, and it was great. You showed no fear, eventually choosing to head down the hill on the wobbliest sled, the boogie board. You sat on your butt, and held on tight as it skidded down the hill, spinning you around. You ended up turned around facing the hill, very proud. In celebration I ran excitedly toward you, pulling up just short by intentionally falling down on my butt. There was more momentum than I expected, which caused me to instinctively plant my feet and — here’s where it gets tragic — spraying you with a wall of snow. It covered your face and went down your shirt and pants and triggered a well-warranted wail. That was it for sledding. What I worry is: has it ruined sledding forever? Or will you forgive and forget? I know I’m being overly sensitive here, but snow and sledding are two of my all-time favorite things, and I would hate to see you fearful of them. Dada can get a little excitable sometimes, that’s all. Next time I promise to keep my shit together, and stay atop the hill.

Much love,
-Dada

A few nights ago when I was nursing you before bed, you took a break, as you often do, and hauled yourself up to standing on my lap. Looking straight into my eyes, you brought your forehead right onto mine with a little clunk. “Clunk!” I said, and you giggled. And then you did it again. And again, and again, and again. Clunk, clunk, clunk, giggle, giggle, giggle. After a little more nursing, you decided you were done, stood up on my lap, patted me on the shoulder and said “Nigh-night! Lalalala!” I mean, it wasn’t quite that clear, but still, that’s what you said. So I picked you up, patted you on your back, and sang you the nigh-night song, and laid you down. You are a girl who knows what she wants.

Here are some things you want: frozen blueberries (all of them in Ron Swansonesque fashion), Ezra’s toys, to eat my nose, to be tickled under your armpits, to stand on the dishwasher door, to eat with a spoon (unless I am holding it), and to drink from Ezra’s sippy cups. You do not want various other things, including to sleep through the night. Alas.

At your age, Ezra was beginning to stand unassisted. You’re not quite as interested. But Ezra never walked while holding our hands and fingers, which you love to do. I won’t be surprised to find you walking before you can stand very well. It would fit with your headlong personality. This month you are incorrigible when plunked in a high chair. The moment my hand is off you, you are like a tiny Houdini, wriggling from whatever cheap seat belt I’ve strapped you down with, so that you can stand up and crawl onto the table. I’m trying to figure out how to fashion a shoulder harness to bring to restaurants.

You continue to think that your big brother is the coolest thing ever. He can make you giggle better than anyone, and you are always eager to go where he is. This month we started constructing forts for him out of couch cushions and blankets, but the first time we did it, he was a little hesitant to crawl through the dark tunnel. Not you. You dove right in, and for weeks we have been watching the two of you follow each other in and out of there.

You are always smiling and giggling right up until the very moment his hugs turn into full-body head-slamming tackles. We are trying to teach him to be more gentle, to avoid smushing your head on the floor, to get off you when you start crying. These things are harder than you might expect to teach a two year old, and so we’ve taken to hoping that the experience will toughen you up, make you even feistier than you’re already cut out to be. At the very least, it can be something to complain about to your friends and therapist in later years.

I can’t believe how close your first birthday is. I remember feeling like Ezra was such a big kid around this time, but now, in comparison to him, you still seem like a baby. I have to remind myself to set up more toys for you, to read you the books he loved at this age, to find an eye in the storm that he is constantly whipping up in the house to have some quiet time with you. A baby and a big girl all at once.

Love and clunks,

Mama

Thirty months. Two and a half. Somehow the latter seems more impressive. You’re in your late 2s. Three is just around the corner, and before we know it you’ll be challenging me at Scrabble and talking fluent Spanish. And maybe, finally, out of diapers.

Your energy levels have spiked, just as the days have gotten colder and shorter. A bad combination. Mama struggles to give you enough activities each day to sufficiently wear you out before naps. When not done properly, the energy translates into overturned tables and tipped-over little sisters. Not that you’re being intentionally mean — even when you admit you’re “being a jerk!” — you just need to express your inner Hulk. I get it. This is why we’re enrolling you in UFC For Tots.

Actually, our savior is that little white strider tricyle. You continue to ride it up and down the hall, and around the block, to the park, the “backsetball core” and the supermarket (“and farmer’s market”). Sometimes we throw it in the car with us so you can explore other parts of the city. A few weeks back we took you and it to watch a cyclocross race at Montrose Harbor. You fit right into the scene, earning the admiration of the latex-clad pros who’d pass by. I had to keep you on a tight leash, lest you merge into race traffic and find yourself trampled by a pack of angry, muddied cyclists.

In other news, we’ve finally, happily lured you away from the crib. My memory is that we did this with promising you stickers for good behavior. This somehow worked. And even though we stopped the whole sticker gambit weeks ago, you still don’t think about jumping in. Which means you and Zella are back in one room, mostly sleeping. Occasionally one of you will implore the other to talk and play, and naps will just refuse to happen.

When you wake up (or, stay awake at naptime), you immediately alert us, “I want to play!” Your talent at puzzles, both jigsaw and more abstract, like the puzzle of how to make train tracks form a loop or go up a hill, is awe-inspiring. You will obsessively work on a certain toy or game, solving its intricacies, and then lay it aside for a few weeks to let your insights percolate. When you return to it, as you have this month with train tracks in a big way, you have always jumped a level in your abilities. The other day you stayed by yourself in the living room for twenty minutes, and when you were done, you had constructed a train track that went up hill and continued, with carefully laid supports, to run above ground for several feet. “Thomas got a branch line!" you cheerfully announced.

Your vocabulary and handle on grammar grows, though your counting skills have stalled. Currently, when we ask what comes past then, we’re told it’s “eleven”, then “fourteenteenteen”, and then “eleventeenteen”. You still love to count objects, if not exactly correctly. The answer is always something like “one two three six nine ten!”, no matter how many there really are. You’ve picked up a sizeable piece of the alphabet song, from where we’re not sure. We haven’t sung it in months. Maybe it just took some time to ripen.

The most amusing new speech development is the variety of your methods of rejection. We offer you something you don’t want? “Don’t like it!” Propose a new activity you reject? “Don’t want to.” Ask you to do something you’re against? “Can’t!” It’d be frustrating except your mood will turn on a dime the moment we hit the one thing you do want. “Listen to the dinosaur song?” Frown turns upside down, eyes sparkles with delight, and you emit a pronounced “zzzzzzYES!”

Finally — and I hesitate to even bring this up because it was a one-afternoon phenomenon, but it’s seminal — you finally picked up on the word “fuck”. We’ve been loose with it around you, because you never seemed to repeat it. Then one day I said it, casually, and you repeated it. That shocked Mom and I into silence and wide-eyed shock. You said it again. Eyes widened even more. We resisted reaction, knowing the wrong move could seal the word’s taboo-ness, and its appeal, forever. You said it again. And again and again, rattling it off a dozen times in a row. Finally I lost it, falling to the floor in laughter. I was so proud, yet so embarrassed, in anticipation of the days to come.

That was a week ago, and you haven’t said it since. I am counting my fucking stars.

Love,
Dad

Thank you for being so cool. Running a puzzle hunt? Cool. Trip to NYC? Whatevs. It’s cool. On the plane ride home from New York, you had your only real meltdown of the trip — a trip that featured sleeping in a storage closet, getting kissed by a giant poodle, and a wedding — after another baby cried so hard that you woke up from a nice nap.

You’ve been mostly an angel about this month’s reboot of the room sharing project, going to sleep easily and still only waking up once a night for a little snack. On occasion, though, mostly at nap time, I do notice that it is you keeping Ezra awake and not the other way around. I have to listen carefully through the door to see if it’s a “Zella, wake up!” day, or a “Zella…lay down…be quiet…” day.

This month you like to share your deepest thoughts and feelings in a serious of carefully chosen syllables (“ba ba da da pa pa pa”) and then, after a moment of careful consideration, punctuate it with an endless rolling trill, the tip of your tongue vibrating against your teething gums like a tiny soothing jackhammer.

You still only have two tiny chiclet teeth in there, though cranky days and an obsession with frozen blueberries have me believing that a few more are on their way pretty soon. You are using them to eat everything you can get your hands on. Still no fan of the spoon, you can pincer even the smallest peas with ease. You are especially careful with those frozen blueberries, barely losing a single one, as your face and hands slowly turn bright purple.

You have had some minor successes in the standing alone department. Uncle Zach’s wedding had just enough complicated distractions to take your mind off your feet, and we got you standing for three or four seconds a few times before you remembered and slowly sank down to the ground. You might not be able to stand unassisted yet, but you are almost always standing. Holding chairs, table legs, the back of my pants, even a flat wall, you shimmy upright whenever you can. Always a daredevil, we’ve had to pull you back from some precarious situations, like when, in a flash, while we were looking elsewhere, you stood up in your high chair and reached across the counter for a bowl. At a restaurant in New York, you managed to crawl completely onto the table. Yes, I realize we should be doing a better job of buckling you into high chairs.

You are more and more interested in toys. Usually Ezra’s. While I spend a lot of time saying, “don’t push Zella,” and “don’t take things from Zella,” and Ezra spends a lot of time crying, “No, Zella! Don’t take it!” — this nascent sharing is ultimately a source of great joy for me. I love the sight of both of you kneeling in front of the box of train tracks, Ezra choosing his next route and you scrambling for whatever you can reach. Today he carefully selected two trains for you to play with, and for the 30 seconds before you wheeled around and caused a major earthquake on the line (“No, Zella!”), he was mesmerized, watching you examine the engines.

Before I wrote this, I looked back at Ezra’s ten month letter. I noticed that we have been remiss teaching you to play “How big is Zella? SO BIG!” and I have been working feverishly to correct this error. We do have a different call and response game already, though. If I say “fist bump!” you break out a huge grin and offer your fist. See, I told you you were cool.

Love and fist bumps,

Mama