Dear Connor - 29 Months

Dear Connor,

Some nights for entertainment, your Dad and I will sit back and listen to you chatter on the baby monitor after we’ve put you and your brother to bed. The chatter fluctuates from yelling for one of us, babbling absentmindedly about something that happened during the day to singing a song. You have several serenades in your repertoire, including what I like to call, The Twinkle-Spider Remix. It starts out with the first line of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and then moves to the second line of Itsy Bitsy Spider, then bounces around, like maybe you had too many Cosmopolitans before hitting the turntable. When you call for one of us, you start with Daddy. After yelling Daddy a few times, you switch it up a little and start yelling, “JOOOORMA”. I find this most amusing, but your Dad… not so much. Once you’ve given up on Daddy, you switch over to me. After a few fake coughs and MOOMEE’s you stop for a minute and say in your very best, sweet little puppy dog voice, “mama?... mama?” And sometimes it even works.

The Brotherhood is coming along nicely. You seem to genuinely enjoy playing with your brother and the site of the two of you laughing makes us laugh too. Tristan watches you constantly and sometimes he cries when you walk away. You want to know where he is at all times and if he’s sleeping, you will ask if he’s sleeping every 20 minutes just to be sure.

Tonight while I was upstairs folding 200 of the 700lbs of laundry I do each week, your Dad said you came up to him and asked, “Where did my shoes go? I need my shoes.”. When he asked you want you wanted your shoes for you replied, “Nothing” and wandered off. A few minutes later you came back into the kitchen with your shoes on and crawled up on the window sill that goes to the screened porch. From there you proceeded to climb THROUGH the window because you wanted to go outside. And while you know you aren’t allowed to climb through windows, you also know that you are not allowed to go outside without your shoes on. This is the reason that we have child-proof locks on every single thing in the house that will take one and gates at every angle. Because if you had access to it, you would walk right out the front door and begin helping yourself to all of the toys in our neighbors garage. You see, not only are you two years old… but also, determined, smart, independent and easily bored. Oh how I can’t wait for the teen years.

You’ve also started remembering things that happened weeks or months ago and randomly bringing them up. Like the time that you fell down and hurt your knee when we were at the beach, 2 months ago. Or asking me in the car on the way home from preschool this week, “Where did Santa go?” You listen intently as I explain Summer, Fall, Winter and Christmas time. I laid off on the gradual change of Christmas from a Pagan celebration to a Christian holiday lecture; I figure I’ll save that one until you are three. But with the long-er term memory, you are gaining other skills. Like being able to count and identify any color. You can work simple puzzles as long as you are willing to sit still for five minutes. You’ve started using pronouns correctly so you don’t sound so much like Elmo when you are talking. For a while we were really torn between proper pronoun usage and how adorable it is when “Connor needs a cookie”. Eventually you figured it out on your own and now patrol the house pointing our what it mine, yours or ours.

You still aren’t really into toys yet, preferring your new yellow rain boots and a stethoscope that came with your Diego Rescue Animal Kit that Santa brought to you. You bring it up to me and say, “Mom-MEE? Can I listen to your heart-beep?” You hold the stethoscope over my heart and say, “Fump-Fump. Fump-Fump”, then back away looking thoughtful. I know I should tell you it’s actually heart-BEAT instead of Beep, but it’s so cute I just can’t bring myself to do it. But I let you listen again and again, because what your plastic stethoscope won’t tell you is that before I met your Dad, that heart of mine, it was starting to get a little bit black and shriveled, but now it’s happily fump-fumping away.
Love,

Mama