Callie at 20 Months

As we are trying to get ready for Baby #2, I find myself desperately trying to hold on to these little moments with Callie. I know part of that desire is because of what happened on  Christmas Eve, which continues to run through my head every now and then. We are still just so thankful that everyone is ok; that our family is back in harmony, Milo included. I am so glad that Callie isn't too much worse for wear. She does have 3 lines/scars on her forehead but they have healed remarkably well. It really is amazing how fast these little ones heal!
In some ways I feel horribly guilty for what is about to happen to her world with this new baby coming in a few short weeks. This is certainly not something she has asked for in her world.  I do hope in the long run that she enjoys being a big sister and having a playmate, but it is going to be chaos for a while, for all of us. I see girlfriends who have sisters and love the connection that they seem to have, even as adults. I really hope that we can instill that in our family for Callie and her sister. But I know it is going to be really hard.  A friend told me an allegory for bringing a new sibling home a couple of weeks ago. It would be like Bill coming home and telling me that he is bringing home another wife and trying to tell me how great it was going to be for me, how fun it would be to have a friend. Yeah. Riiight. I know we are going to lose those family of 3 moments where we all snuggle on the futon in the back room reading Go Dog Go or Cat in the Hat or watching Finding Nemo for the millionth time.
But anyway, Callie is at this amazing point where she is just soaking everything up. Language is everywhere and it is so cool to watch her figure it out. It does, however, mean we are fully in the realm of "watch what you say" because you will hear it come out of her mouth! Luckily we've been really good about that so no bad words yet:) It became clear we had to be careful just before Christmas when we were watching Monday Night Football, you know the game where Candlestick Park lost power? Bill was watching it more than I was and yelled out "Nice!" in response to some play that had happened. Without missing a beat, Callie responded with "Nice!" as well. I gave Bill a look that said "Be careful!"
She has been so into animals and sounds for a while. One of our favorite things that she does is she calls birds "beeps." It started because we were doing animal sounds months ago and I told her birds say "tweet tweet" but all she could say was "beep beep." So whenever she sees birds outside or in a book she will exclaim so proudly "BEEP!" We love it! I know that one day soon she will say "bird" instead and that will probably make me a little sad, so I'm going to hold onto her and her beeps for as long as I can.
She also loves airplanes. She will squeal "airplane!" clear as day anytime she hears one. When you give her something to eat she will (most of the time) exclaim loudly "Gank Yoo!" You can't help but smile and say "You're welcome!" especially when she says it 4 or 5 times in response to receiving a piece of cheese or some watermelon. She will come up to us at night, usually, and say "Kiss?" and plant one on us. Then she will say "hug?" It is the sweetest thing I have every experienced. The selfless love is something I wish I could bottle and hold onto forever. She will even do it to my belly so she can kiss the baby. When Bill walks through the door she screams "Dada! Dada!" And no matter how crazy she has made me during the day, it just makes me melt. These sweet things don't mean that she has really mellowed though! She is still a wild girl who loves to run and jump with abandon, always trusting that the universe or someone will be there to pick her up. I know that her wild streak will be tough to manage when I am on my own with a newborn and a toddler but I hope that we can all adjust without losing our sense of fun and maybe we should all be a bit more like Callie. The world is a pretty amazing place afterall! So I am going to try to be like Callie, not get too worked up about what I think is going to happen and just react when it does and try to find the fun in it too.