Dear Elise, you're TWO years old!

Dear Elise,

Happy Birthday! My sweet baby girl is TWO! I can hardly even call you a baby anymore. But I will continue to do so, because you are, you are my sweet baby girl.

Since I last wrote to you, your language has truly exploded. I sat down about 6 weeks ago and counted 200+ words that you know. Since then, it's probably doubled. You are consistently using 3-5 word sentences, which amazes me. Your first 4 word sentence was "No Beckett go bye-bye" when you and I were taking a "Mommy & Elise" trip to the YMCA. Your first 3 word sentence was "Mommy eat eggs" when you were pretending to make eggs for me. It's not until you become a parent that the most simple things become the biggest and most important moments in your life, and I will always think of "Mommy eat eggs" when I think of the defining moments in my life.

You are a little monkey - you love to hang and swing on anything you can, including the bathroom sink. You climb up the outsides of the stairs, which freaks me out. You have about mastered somersaults, and you think jumping off things is the coolest. We're enrolling you in gymnastics starting in January. Between your monkeyness and shortness, this may be our best shot at retiring young!

Bedtime continues to be interesting with you. You continue to insist to sleep naked (except for your diaper.) Sometimes you want to sleep with your kitty blanket, sometimes with your Yo Gabba Gabba blanket, sometimes with your knit blanket. It's a great guessing game. What's a given, though, is that you want to sleep with the lights on. Why? Even at nap time, so it's not that you are afraid of the dark. Whatever - as long as you are willing to go to sleep without a fight, we're willing to run up our electric bill. Priorities.

One of the funniest things you've picked up on from me is "Five minutes." I have tried to give you time warnings from a young age so that you know what's coming. I'll say, "It's night-night time in five minutes." or "Five more minutes in the bath" or whatever. And now when you want to keep doing something, you look us straight in the eye, hold up your five little dimpled fingers, and very sincerely say, "Five minutes." That's hard to say no to!

We've been pottytraining since about 23 months. It's going pretty well - you wake up dry most mornings and rarely use a diaper throughout the day. And since you get treats for using the potty, you will sit on it every five minutes to get more treats. We quickly realized you were abusing the system and had to put a stop to it. Do your business? Get a treat. No business? No treat. You just love your treats - most people call them M&M's. You call them lemmers. The only step left is figuring out how to get you to go #2 in the potty. Since your dad is home with you daily, I'll leave that up to him!

You still love your brother. You share your toys with him and play with him. I love watching you try to teach him how to do something. You grab his little hand and make it push the buttons, slide the slides, and so on. However, sometimes I think you think he is a toy, as when you are finished playing with him, you toss him aside like a cast-off toy. He's going to be bigger than you soon, so I'd watch that!

The things you can do now amaze me. You can do an alphabet puzzle (with 26 pieces!) all by yourself, you can count to 10, you know several letters, you sing tons of songs, and you even know a few colors. It's amazing as a mother to watch your child learn things. It's one of the most rewarding parts of motherhood, to watch your child grasp a concept, accomplish something by themselves, learn something new. I have no doubt that being your mother is going to continue to be very rewarding as you blow us away with your intelligence.

These last two years have been nothing short of amazing. We've had our share of ups and downs, but the one consistent has been the joy you've brought us. Oh, the whining and crying has been consistent as well - how could I forget? But truly, my little peanut, you are such a precious child, full of love and joy who makes people smile with her fiery, spunky personality. My greatest hope for you is that you always retain that fieriness, as it makes you who you are. I just love it! And I love you, Mommy