Dear Madeline: January, 2013

Dear Madeline,

Time is passing by so quickly, but it seems like forever ago that I was writing your last monthly letter.  Here we are in a new year.  This year you will turn three.  You will learn so much.  You will grow so tall.  You will probably start preschool this year.

It seems recently that all traces of baby are gone from you.  You're such a little kid.  You don't look like a baby anymore.  Your legs are getting so long and skinny.  Your face is thinning out.  Those baby curls are finally starting to fill in and grow longer.  Your hair has been one giant red mop these past few weeks.  It's like you have a permanent case of bed head no matter how much I try to brush it and tease it into a manageable shape.

You're so smart and curious about the world. You ask us questions all the time.  Everything is, "What's that?" or "Whatchu doin?" or "Where we goin'?"  You never stop talking.  At this very moment, you're upstairs chatting yourself to sleep.  I've heard you reading to Olaf, singing a song that involve the lyrics, "I can be anything!  I can go anywhere!"  and pretending to talk to a friend from school.  Two minutes ago you yelled, "Mumma?  Can you hear me?  I love you!"  Heart melt...

And your memory is pretty darn incredible.  Your poor Mumma can't remember where I put my car keys most of the time, but you seem to remember everything.  Dada put on a black cap the other day when it was extra chilly.   You looked at him and said, "Pop has a hat like that.  Pop. In New York."  You were right.  Dada's hat does look a lot like the one your Pop has, and Pop does indeed live in New York.

You had a fever this evening that seemed to come out of nowhere.  You were lying low on the couch, looking sad, so I let you use my phone to watch a movie.  I was pretty impressed with your skills.  You not only got to the Netflix app on your own, but then you scrolled through the movies, chose one you wanted to watch, and pressed play by yourself.  Um...I think my two-year-old knows how to use my phone better than I do.  Almost.  What will the world look like when you're my age, little one?

Meanwhile, you've become a princess to the max.  Mimi got you some dress up clothes for Christmas, and you spend a lot of time trying on your various princess dresses.  Snow White is your favorite to wear, but Rapunzel is still your favorite to watch.  You have a Rapunzel doll and a Merrida doll from the movie Brave (red hair...although you haven't seen the movie yet) that have become your best buddies.  You like to give them hugs and stand them up to watch you color.  Sometimes when you're wearing one of your princess dresses, you ask to listen to princess music, so I turn on Pandora while you twirl around the house.  I think we're raising quite the girly-girl.

You're also a girl with a stubborn streak.  We joke that we missed our window of opportunity with potty training.  There was a time, almost a year ago now, when you were very interested in the whole potty thing.  Yet now that we're actually trying to get you to use it, you've dug your heels in the ground.  You're just not interested in anymore.  Not even the promise of M&Ms or big girl underwear does the trick.  I'm hoping that changes soon...

Before we know it, it'll be 2014, and you'll be going on four.  At this rate, you just might be ready to take over the world by that point.

Love You Most,
Mumma