That is my favorite photo of you from this month, baby. I look at it and I feel it in my heart. It’s not glamorous or technically perfect. It’s just your expression. It’s YOU, your sweet face – open, happy, inquiring, content. It’s one of those rare photos where the camera didn’t come between us. You’re looking through the camera at me, in a moment of fun with Daddy and I in our bed first thing on a lazy morning, with that sweet little grin and chapped lips. I just wanna eat you up.

And speaking of chapped lips. You are addicted to chapstick. You inherited my easily parched smackers and are always asking for tac tac (“chapstick”, which is also what it sounds like when you say “backpack”), jutting your lips out, rubbing your fingers on them. We stopped putting regular chapstick on you months ago and started using your non-alcohol based special lotion (also good for lips) instead. It works wonders, but you no matter how hydrated we keep you, you love to pick. You get that from somebody in the family. It’s not me. It’s a habit you’ve gotten into that I’m not sure how we’ll break. You frequently make your pretty little lips bleed with all your fingering and pulling.

I thought I’d include these next photos because right now we’re missing Daddy. He’s in Atlanta all week – 4 more days to go.  Even with all overnight business trips he has to go on, I wouldn’t trade his schedule for a normal 9-5. We are blessed to have him around during the daytime on weekdays a lot of the time. We get used to having him home and he is sorely missed by both of us when he’s gone for several days at a time. I’m feeling especially grateful at the moment to have a partner with which to raise you. We both love you so much and we love each other so much. We’re really different people with a lot of things in common and I love our family dynamic.  I’m glad he is there for you, to provide things, and be to you things that I can’t be. I frequently get teary-eyed watching the two of you together. The scene below is one I walked in on one day when Daddy was watching you so that I could work. He’d gotten the piggy bank out and was teaching you about pennies and quarters.

And Daddy built you a playset! I know I mentioned it last month. But here are a couple more photos to give you an idea how cool it is. We’ve been having such icky weather lately that we haven’ t been able to use it daily… but close. You certainly want to go outside and play on it as often as I’ll let you.

You love books. You always have. What I love most about that is how independent you are about it. You will get piles of books and your blanky and just flip through them on your own. You will stay in your crib for an hour or 2 at a time quietly “reading” when you’re not sleepy. And of course you love to have books read to you as well. You get 2 or 3 before every naptime and bedtime. And now you choose them for yourself (and in the correct number, if we tell you 2, you choose 2). We go to the library regularly so we always have a new stack to choose from. Any time you tell me NO when I say it’s nap time, I give you the choice “books and then naptime or no books before naptime?” It works every time. You say “yeah!” and run over and grab books to read, even if seconds before you were running away from me and hiding in a corner dead set against sleepy time.

Of course we do the typical colors and numbers thing a lot when we read and you can count to five, easily… except all five numbers are “i”. I, i, i, i, I! Haha, it’s so cute. And if I slow you down and ask you to say ONE, you do say something closer to “one” than “i”. You get close to saying one, two and three correctly. You’re speech is improving in general. You are far from a fast-talker at this point, still not your strongest area. But I feel good about the improvements you’ve made. You are really trying now, and that’s all I’ve really wanted to see. For so long you were adamant about not attempting to say anything. Now, you almost always will *try* to repeat things I ask you to say. Some words are very close. Some words only I (and maybe Daddy and Mima) can understand. And some are pretty far off. But I am so proud of you for TRYING. You should see me clap, giddy as a school girl, every time you say something new. It’s really exciting. We’ve waited so long to hear you talk. It’s really fun to get to the point where we get to watch you grow up in that way.

You are also growing up to be quite the organized, dainty, lover of tidiness, grooming and general put-togetherness. I love it because it’s so ME. I don’t know if you had a natural inclination toward tidiness in general or if it’s the fact that we’ve fostered that in you since the beginning. Whatever it is, it’s paying off.  You make messes of course, and of course we encourage it. But we’ve always included you in pick up time and except for a very brief stint, you’ve never really resisted it. At this point, it only usually takes me asking once and you will pick up whatever you were playing with and put it away correctly… in the right bag, bin, or whatever, organized. And I’m not joking. You are 2. I’m pretty sure that’s not typical. But I love it. And you always seem satisfied when you’ve put things where they go too. I think you really do appreciate order. Hallelujah. You are my daughter. 🙂

You do have your moments of grumpiness. I adore the photo of you above.  It’s probably my second favorite photo of you from this month. You had just woken up and you gave me that face when you saw my camera. You were not in the mood. Poor baby. I did put the camera away and snuggle with you right after I took the pic.  And below is the face of puzzle frustration. You’ve gotten quite good at puzzles in the last couple of months. Daddy and I finally dug through some boxes of my old things and pulled out some of my old puzzles from when I was a little girl. Mima and Papi saved a ton of them for us – the nice wood ones. I took out 4 of them I thought were the least advanced thinking you might be able to do them sometime this year. You’ve mastered them all already. I’m going to have to go back and get the rest of them – the harder ones – out. I’m really impressed so far.

Since starting a 365 of you (one photo every day of 2012), I take my camera with us pretty much everywhere we go. It’s fun because I feel like it’s encouraged me to capture parts of our life we normally wouldn’t… like below. We’re in the process of planning a kitchen remodel and you’ve been shopping with us several times for appliances. You’re such a good girl in stores. Every now and then you get overly excited and become a handful, but for the most part you stay within eyesight and make your own fun, like crawling around on your hands and knees meowing and acting like a kitten. You regularly make all the old folks in Palm Springs swoon over your cuteness.

You wave goodbye to anything and everything. Strangers, animals, places, houses. You always wave and say bye to our house whenever we pull out of the driveway. This week you started blowing kisses at it too.

It’s now 2am. It’s really hard to get anything done during daylight hours these days. You really require a lot of attention. You don’t always nap, and even if it’s only a quiet time in your crib, that usually doesn’t happen until around 2pm these days. It’s been interesting adjusting to that. I like to work in the mornings. I tend to lose my motivation by the afternoon and evening. It’s an adjustment I’m having to make because that really just doesn’t work for us anymore.

It’s a constant battle for me – my will to be the best mother I can be to you and to not miss out on anything during this very short time in your life when you are little. And balancing that with being  business owner/photographer and the constant feeling that I NEED to get things done. I don’t always succeed in having a perfect attitude, perfect balance, perfect priorities. Some days it’s really a struggle to give up me time – business time – to keep you happy. Being a parent is the more rewarding, amazing thing I have ever done. But it is also the hardest. And I want you to know that so that you are prepared when you’re married and start thinking about having babies. There is nothing like having a child to show you how self-centered you really are. It requires a lot of adjustment, a lot of putting yourself on the back burner, constantly putting somebody else’s needs and wants ahead of your own. It’s hard. It’s something that I pray about and that I need God’s help with. I don’t want to have regrets that I spent too much time on good things – memory-keeping, photography, business, hobbies – and missed out on the BEST thing, YOU! I cherish you, baby. I pray God makes me everything you need me to be. I love you so much.

And you’ll be waking me up in about 4 hours needing all my love and attention, so I better call it a night. Muah!