It’s been a minute since I last shared a baby update and somewhere along the way my baby morphed into a toddler without my ever slowing down to acknowledge that fact. Friends, this motherhood journey never fails to amaze me with how beautiful and hard it can be, all at the same time. Our little girl is now a little over two and half years old, and over the last six months she has grown and matured so much that it’s actually pretty emotional for me. I’m the mom who cries regularly (read: many times a week) over everything from how much I love my kid to how quickly she’s growing to how smart she is to how much of a pain in the ass she can be some days. (Let’s be honest with each other on that, ok?) At two and a half she still stays home with me full-time save for busy shoot or prep days when she’s generally with a sitter. This fall she’ll be starting pre-k (more on that later) so I am feeling really emotional now that we’re in the final stretch of this time where it’s just been Mommy and Bébé conquering the world. So here we are, at two and a half, full of spunk, melting down a few times a day and as obsessed as ever with her daddy, her big brothers and her puppy Harper.
At two and a half, our little Em is a fierce one. She’s wildly independent and is always trying to “help” or insisting, “I do, I do!” I can already tell she has much of her mother’s “I am girl, hear me roar” personality, which is both thrilling and outright scary. Ha! This little one simply has no fear. She’ll walk up the slide backwards, jump off of furniture into piles of pillows, and occasionally take off running into the street despite us chasing her and screaming our heads off for her to stop. (Yup, that’s happened.) She keeps us on our toes for sure, but I am grateful and in awe of her fire. Even at two I can look at her and know that she is destined for big things in this life, and there’s effectively zero percent chance that she’ll take no for an answer.
Many of you have seen on Instagram that this girl loves music and absolutely loves to dance. I first started taking her to Kindermusik classes at four months old and now we’ve transitioned into daily dance parties, usually starting with dancing around the dining room table before breakfast. She also loves being on the water, hanging out on the boat, spending time with her cousin/BFF Nathan whom she calls Bubby (you also see him a lot on my Stories), coloring, playing with bubbles, making Mommy tea, and romping around the yard with all the neighborhood girls, who are all approximately ten years older than her and make one very doting posse for sure. Give her a swing and a slide and she’ll be happy for days. Until you tell her it’s time to go inside and then she’ll cry like there’s no tomorrow.
Since birth our little babe has been in the 90th percentile or higher for height, which continues to be the case. It makes her look a little older than she is sometimes and it’s something I struggle with since I’d love for her to be tiny forever. Her daddy gave her those genes for sure! Now at two and a half, she’s fully potty trained, talking more and more every day and knows all her colors. Her vocabulary is expanding almost daily, which has to be one of my favorite stages of watching her grow to date. There is nothing like when your kid first starts saying “I love ma mommy! I love ma daddy!” We still read books and rock every night before bed, and while she’s still in her crib at the moment she’ll be transitioning into a bed in a hot minute for sure. We’re definitely seeing the end of anything even remotely close to her baby days and it’s heartbreaking and so rewarding. Thus all of my crying. Even more than usual.
For those of you who read along this far, thanks! I know these posts are largely just for the moms who write them, but I also know a lot of you love following along with her little adventures on Instagram so I wanted to share a more comprehensive update. In about a week she’ll be going to her senior prom so it seemed like it was time to sit down and capture a tiny bit of who she is today while she’s still my tiny little babe. I have a lot of other parenting related posts I plan to write soon that I think will be actually helpful to some of you. Today it was just about loving on my favorite little human. It’s hard to believe how big she is, but I’m so grateful for the privilege of being her mom and getting to help her grow and learn and love every day.
[Photos by Alice G. Patterson.]