R 28 and 29 months

Dear R,

I may need to start calling this your "bimonthly newsletter" since that's been the pattern with the last two. I'll do my best to stay on track from here on out, though. I actually started a draft of this last month but then things got wild once your little brother was born!

Before he came, we were seeing lots of new developments in terms of your ever-growing independence. Grammie was in town visiting from the end of September through the end of October, and you and she quickly developed a great morning routine. The two of you would get up around 5 or 5:30 a.m. and she'd brew a pot of coffee while hanging out with you eating cold cereal for breakfast. You're quite good at eating cereal with a spoon, although I have yet to see you eat a complete bowl without getting at least a few handfuls of cereal.

One of your favorite things to do during breakfast is drink the milk out of your bowl. It's so cute. What is slightly less cute are the tantrums you throw--and the yelling that we're sure the entire neighborhood can hear--about the most arbitrary things in the mornings. It could be as simple as you requesting a bowl of "Daddy cereal" and someone guessing wrong exactly what kind of cereal "Daddy cereal" is. You certainly aren't the most chipper creature in the morning.

It's even worse if you've leaked out of your diaper and we have to try to wrestle you out of your pajamas before you've had food. Yikes.

But even better than watching you assert your new-found independence is hearing you tell stories, and to practice "reading" every chance you get. When we read stories at night, you almost always pull two books off the shelf, one for me to read and one for you to read. At first when you did this, I thought you wanted us both to sit silently and read our individual books together. But what you really want is for me to read my book aloud while you hold yours and occasionally flip through the pages. Then we switch books, and you "read" my book while I read yours.

You're getting very interested in imaginative play, and your favorite the last few months has been to put one of your dolls in one of your baby strollers and make one of the following announcements, while you leave whatever room you happen to be in (usually either your room or the living room):

"I put the babies in the stroller"

"I going bye byes"

"I going to the restaurant/aquarium/store"

You love all things baby-related. We bought you some items to help you take care of your babies, including a Fisher-Price doctor's kit (almost identical to one that I had growing up) and Grammie got you a new, more realistic-feeling baby doll for after RUS was born. Unfortunately, while you found these items lots of fun, and have played with them a bunch, they really don't distract you from wanting-- all the time-- to hold RUS. When we try to encourage you to imitate Mommy or Daddy by doing a similar thing that we're doing with your babies, you get very upset and say, "NO! I want to hold that baby!"

Other things you've told us many times over the last two months:

"Shh! The babies are sleeping," after laying your dolls down on various blankets around your room and/or the living room. You also frequently drag your baby crib out of your room down to the living room and watch your dolls sleep in it.

Now that we've moved, we're a little farther away from work (only about a 25-minute walk, really, but less convenient than the previous 7-minute walk) and we drop Daddy off in the mornings before heading to day care. You like to imagine that you're the one doing the dropping off, rather than the one being dropped off, as you sometimes announce "I drop Mommy off at school!"

Imitation is the word of the day here. I'm having a BLAST teaching you new signs almost every day. We don't really use them in everyday conversation, but it's great seeing you be able to move your fingers and imitate what I'm doing with my hands. I've been practicing signs most when we read together at night, although this is sometimes hard because I'm often holding the book at the same time. We also remember during meal times, but we haven't been really consistent with it. You regularly use the sign for "full" as you indicate that you're "all done" at the dinner table. You also like using various animal and color hand signs but not regularly. You've really been practicing the alphabet though, and I'm proud to say you can actually form signs for just about every letter and number although I'm not sure if you know them all yet. You definitely know "R" though!

Love,
Mama