Odessa, 27 months

Odessa, you are magically, wonderfully, lovably delicious. I have a hard time not wanting to kiss those cheeks all the time. I am constantly amazed by you. This may be the one of the most important parental roles: we all, at some point, have had someone just blown-away by exactly who we are.

I feel like your cognitive development and language have just taken off like a rocket in the last few months or so. You understand and say so much! You get humor (arm in sleeve trick), you know how to use a fake cry to get what you want, or put things behind your back that you don't want us to see. You are very good at communicating what you want and what you don't want ("no, night-night, no!") When you read books, you often see things that I hadn't noticed and often tell me what they are.

I do have to say that I curse Dr. Suess with all the whosits and whatsits and things that you can think. One of your favourite phrases is "what's that?" and you won't stop repeating it until you get a response that meets your satisfaction. Normally that is an easy enough task. But when you read Dr. Suess (over and over and over and over) I don't know what those non-sensical things are and you are not impressed with the repeated response of "I have no idea." Nor does my "thats a whosit, thats a whatsit, thats a thingamajigee" seem to impress you either. Eventually I just attempted to have a serious conversation with you about Dr. Seuss and his imaginative perversion, I mean genious, but it didn't go very well. So, a few books may be disappearing for awhile. You will appreciate this when you have a two-year-old of your own.

This afternoon we layed down for a nap. It was quickly obvious that you were disinterested in sleep. But you had been acting SO tired that I decided to stick with the plan of getting you to go to sleep. I am keeping my eyes closed but sensing that you are moving around. Ever-so-slowly you are getting off the bed. Your feet are barely touching the carpeting when I open my eyes and say "Dessa..." in, you know, that tone. You had a very guilty look on your sweet little face. Ever so sly, so say in your sweet sing-song voice "I love you" and then creep back onto the bed. A few minutes later the whole scenario repeats and this time instead of spouting off your love, you said "shake your body." Maybe that was just to throw me totally off track.

A post is not complete without an update on sleep: I am happy to report that 9 out of 10 times you wake up ZERO times a night. Again, a day that I thought would never arrive. I get better sleep now than I have in YEARS. What is funny too is that this lack of night-awakening happened very much spontaneously no coaching necessary. A couple months back you still woke up regularly through the night and now I put you down for the night and you are officially out till morning. Crazy.

And on that note, good night.