Letters To My Offspring: Twenty three months, aka are you really almost two?

Hi little one,

Tonight before bedtime your Daddy put you up against the growth chart on your wall and we saw you've grown nearly four inches since last year. Four inches! You still have one month left until you are two whole years old, which according to someone, somewhere if you double your height at two years that will be your height when you are done growing.

Thirty-one inches you were today. Daddy adds and says sixty-two. I say, yes, sixty two inches, the same as me. What a surprise that you wouldn't be six feet tall with such giants for parents.

You are up to so much lately! You have a hard time laying still so I can change a diaper but you are not quite ready for your training toilet although you like sitting on it with your clothes on. You've sat on it twice naked before taking a bath, but no action. I know if I was a really motivated parent I would have had you toilet-trained at 18 months, but in some ways I'm just a lazy American with easy access to diapers. I do feel a tinge guilty about landfills and such, but I mitigate that guilt when I remember I used cloth diapers when you were an infant.

From what I understand though, about those toddlers who are toilet trained at 18 months is that it takes supreme dedication and devotion from the parents on getting the toddler behind onto that seat all the time. It's more about training the parent than the toddler at this point, which seems to be the case a lot.

You have a few new tricks up your sleeve. You like to take keys and hide them in strange places. One time I found my keys in the back of your baby stroller. The other day Daddy was frantically searching for his keys and never found them. Two days later you pulled them out of a pot in the cupboard. Of course! Where else would you keep keys!

Grandma Bear was out visiting a couple weeks ago and she read you lots of books. She also taught you to say "Thank you Mommy" or "thank you grandma." After she left we started a new game where I say "thank you Ava" and you respond "sink you mommy." We volley the thank yous back and forth about six times until we are both laughing.

You have broken past the P boundary when you sing your ABC's. You skip a few letters now and X sounds a lot like F, but you make it all the way to Z. Just like Mommy, you say Z with all of the enthusiasm you have.

After bathtime you still often give me a big hug, when you are naked and dripping wet. I always make sure I approach bathtime in clothes that don't have water stain issues. You then like to run around in just your hooded towels like a miniature super hero. You are rapidly nearing the stage where you prefer naked to clothed.

Well, I take that back. You like clothes, but what you really like is to put more clothes on over the clothes you are already wearing. You can get pants on but still aren't sure about shirts, except today for the first time you got a sweater over your head.