Dear Sage,

When people find out that you are 2, they immediately say "Ah, the Terrible Twos!" Yeah, right, as if THAT particular phase didn't start from birth.

The drama! As soon as you learned the word "me," you quickly added "mine" to your repetoire. So whenever your brother dares touch one of your toys, we get to hear "MEEEEEEEEEE! MINE!" at eardrum-piercing decibels.

You are finally starting to speak - using real words, that is, instead of your Sage-isms. You had a speech therapy session with a new teacher on your birthday, and you emerged saying "baby" for the very first time. This might not sound impressive, but I did get teary-eyed. For almost a year, you have called babies "mamas" despite my consistently telling you the correct word. For you to finally say something correctly..you were so proud!

And you keep adding words! "Cookie" is a favorite. You are finally really trying to repeat what we say (so I guess you'll be saying "shit" pretty soon..) and we feel for the first time that you might, actually, speak. You've even started to sing "itsy bitsy spider" although it is all presently gibberish. You're awesome at the hand movements, tho!

We do have conversations. A typical one goes something like this:

"Sage, can I give you a kissy?"
"No."
"A hug?"
"No."
"Tickle-tickle?"
"NOOOOO Mommy. NOOOO!"

We predict you're going to be our little jock - who'll wear pink ribbons in your hair. One of your favorite toys you got for your birthday is a talking princess mirror. You love to gaze into it, then press the buttons and hear things like "your hair looks lovely today." (Now, this is something I think all of us could use. Can you imagine, when you're feeling bloated, you have a huge pimple emerging like Vesuvius from your chin AND your hair is not only frizzy but in dire need of a dye job to hide the advancing army of grey, just picking up your mirror and having it say "You are an incredibly hot babe (push button) You can't be a day over 20 (push button) "Your breasts are amazingly perky today" and so on.)



You also slept in your sparkly pair of dress-up shoes. Diva!



Everyone is now trying to convince me to cut your hair. But I can't. You're a girl! So what if you have some sort of wispy mullet thing going on. When I blow dry it, I can stretch the two longest strands down to your shoulders!



We are still working on getting you to say the word "two." But there is no doubt you knew your birthday party was for you. How did we know? It was the "MEEE! PARTY!!!" that tipped us off. And the day after your party, the first thing you did after getting out of your crib was to run to our bedroom window and look out into the back yard to see if the Curious George bounce house was still there (it wasn't).

You knew your day was all about you. Kind of like every day. Except, on your birthday, there was cake.




Happy birthday, baby girl. We love you more than any words..

Mommy