Dear Bridget –

You are TWO years old! What a joy you are! You are super cute on the outside and inside. I just LOVE this age! You love to play – either by yourself, with Lucy, or with friends. You are starting to become a kid in the fact that you like to do as many things as possible by yourself, but you still retain some “babyish” things, like the fact that you can’t run very well (not nearly as fast as Lucy), and you fall a lot (you aren’t quite as stable on your feet). You are SUCH a talker! You have been talking to us in complete sentences for awhile now, I think you started a few months before turning 2. You always have lots of thoughts and love to communicate with any and everyone. You are very sweet and get along easily with pretty much everyone. You are very enthusiastic about life and are our little cheerleader. I’ve told multiple people recently that you are the most encouraging member of our family, you are constantly saying “Thanks Mom” “Thanks Dad” or “Good Job!” to us – lol. By the way, I can’t figure out why you call us Mom and Dad even though we refer to ourselves as Mommy and Daddy.

Although you are very sweet and kind – you are NOT a pushover. Whenever things aren’t going your way, you like to let out a scream to let us know you aren’t happy – this normally occurs when you and Lucy are playing together and Mom and Dad aren’t in the room. We are trying to teach you to not be a drama queen – and to use words instead of screams to get your point across.

The last two months have been very eventful around here. We have had almost constant visitors – mainly family who have visited us after Josiah was born about 6 weeks ago. You have really enjoyed playing with all of our guests. Since we were pretty much “homebound” with newborn Josiah, I decided that it was a great time to potty train you. You had seemed ready for awhile, but I did NOT feel up to it in the last trimester of pregnancy. Well, turns out you WERE ready, and you have been doing AWESOME! I love how excited you get when you go in the potty. You love to cheer yourself on. You also love the rewards you get – you never forget to remind us to give you your jellybean.

Some more facts about you at 2:

• You didn’t have much hair on your first birthday at all, but now you have a full head of dirty blonde curls! I never thought I would ever have a “blondie” for a child – but it sure is adorable! 
• I feel like overall you are growing up “faster” than Lucy because you want to keep up with her so badly. You truly believe that you are capable of anything she does and it really upsets you when you try to do something you see that she does but can’t do – today it was climbing up a giant toy frog at the mall playground. You saw Lucy do it a certain way, and could not accept the fact that you couldn’t mimic her! 
• You moved out of your crib and into your big girl bed (the bottom bunk) a few weeks before turning 2 I think. You did awesome with it from the first night. The first week or so, you and Lucy would talk and sing together while going to sleep. Now, Lucy goes to bed earlier (around 7:30) than you since she doesn’t nap/sleep doing the day. So by the time you go to bed (around 8:30), we just whisper a prayer, you get a sip of water, and as long as you have some of your bears with you, you are good to go. By the way – you are still obsessesed with your white polar bear stuffed animal. You sleep/cuddle with it, and also play with it all day. 

• You are a good sleeper at friends houses and when we travel now too. I don’t take this for granted! 
• You wake up around 7:30, we take you potty, and you and Lucy normally watch a show on the couch together before breakfast. Your favorite show now is Daniel Tiger. But you are pretty happy to watch the shows Lucy picks too, although they sometimes don’t keep your interest as long. 

• You like trying to dress yourself – but still need help with that. You can wash your hands by yourself, as long as I turn on the water for you. 
• You love riding bikes outside. Your bike is the pink plasma car. You can really book it on that thing and can almost go as fast as Lucy on her regular bike. 
• You also love the pink Barbie car that Gigi and Pops got you for your birthday. You are content to be the passenger and you press the music buttons while Lucy drives. You can’t reach the pedals yet….otherwise, I’m not sure you’d be okay with this set up. 

• You have started to like art projects a little more. Coloring doesn’t hold your attention more than 5 minutes and you normally start coloring on yourself or something else that you shouldn’t. However, you do really like gluing and cutting construction paper. 
• You love playing outside on the back deck. This is a frequent activity recently with a newborn in the house. 
• You also love the swimming pool – another quite frequent activity. After about 1-2 pool visits, you got comfortable keeping balanced “swimming” with your puddle jumper. You also like to jump in, although you don’t let your head go under water yet. 
• You love Gigi and Pops’ boat and talk about it all the time 🙂 
• You love your baby brother. I haven’t seen any jealousy at all! You even literally tell me a few times a week “I love my baby brother Josiah mom.” 
• You and Lucy spend a LOT of time playing together. You have a love/hate relationship. Sometimes you play GREAT. Then other times it seems like it is impossible to have a peaceable 5 minutes with the two of you in the same room! The games you like to play together include Mommy (Lucy) and Baby (Bridget) and sometimes/rarely it’s Mommy (Bridget) and Baby (Lucy). You are pretty believable as the baby, and make crying noises and crawl around the house. The two of you also like to pretend you are driving somewhere. 

• You are a pretty good eater. You aren’t picky at all, and eat a pretty good quantity of food most of the time. We went through a few months, where dinner time was a battle and you were in tears almost every evening. The battle was mainly over you not wanting to eat the bites we required for you to get a dessert – especially when Lucy had already “earned” her dessert. Things seem to have gotten better. 
• You are EXTREMELY messy! Ever since we started you on baby food, you have always managed to get your food everywhere! To this day, you get food all over your body, under your bib, on and UNDER your booster seat, and all over the floor! 
• My favorite thing you say is “I love you too” – you always add the “too” at the end <3 li="">

I’m so thankful for you Bridget! You will always be my baby girl! I love you so much!

Love, Mom