

Dear Rachel, you are beautiful inside and out! Carefree, curious, confident!
You love to run. You do summersalts on the bed. You unload the diswasher, holding a glass in one hand, your other hand behind your back, and you shake your head, saying “not safe… break… joke”.
You struggled and struggled until you mastered holding up two proud fingers.
You like to say “do it” and “self” and “own” and “me, Rachel”. It’s so cute!
You can sing the abc’s now, sometimes missing a letter here and there. You can definitely count to 5, and mostly count to 10. You like the 1, 2, buckle my shoe song.
We blow birthday candles out still, after almost 6 weeks now since your actual birthday.
And Barney is a huge hit, but it makes your brother complain. When you were first learning to talk you called him “Barn”. We sing those purple dinosaur songs all the time… Mr. Sun, Sun… and Mr. Knickerbocker… you are so funny. You mimic your friend doing the Cooper Dance sometimes, and you mimic your brother, telling me to “stop” in the middle of my fine singing.
We mess around on the art table every day now: coloring, painting, glueing, playdough and your newest accomplishment, scissors!
You’ve grown up into a fine 2 year old. 35 inches high, and 26 lbs. You have a baby, she nurses, and takes a bottle. She cries a lot! She has a great mommy though! Always rocking and pushing her around in the stroller.
We sing the ABC’s to Hannah to bounce her to sleep in the Amby Swing, you’ve learned to be cooperative at naptime. You love your sister and the two of you are so symbiotic, often waking from your naps within minutes of each other, even when nothing had seemingly stirred you. But you are starting hit her and that has to stop.
You are sleeping as good as you can, and crawling into our bed to get some of the same snuggle time daddy and Hannah and I enjoy. We have all seen Nemo about a million times. But that is all that the bedroom tv plays. A little Disney channel here and there, and we do miss the dvd portable since your summersalt landded on it, but we are taking a nice break from it. The car dvd’s can suffice for now.
There are a million little things I like about you!
love, mommy