Dear Hadley,
You turn twenty months old today. We are officially out of the “teen” months and edging closer and closer to two. But I’m not too worried about the “terrible two’s” though, because while you can be quite stubborn and rather opinionated (I have no idea where you got these often-misunderstood-but-not-all-together-bad characteristics from), I know your true personality. You are a Little Miss Sunshine. You love to smile and laugh and giggle and when you do, all those other less favorable traits just disappear.

As you get older (and who wouldn’t consider twenty months to be old, anyway?) you get girly-er and girly-er all the time. Right now you are all about the accessories. Everything you find becomes jewelry or something to adorn your little body. You found an old cow-print hair scrunchy of mine buried deep in one of my bathroom drawers and you would have thought Christmas had come early! You wore that thing all day long and refused to let me take it off your wrist. You also discovered that all of Ana’s multi-colored hair bands make perfect bangle bracelets. Between you and the cats, I am constantly finding hair bands scattered all around the house.

While you can be very loud and flamboyant, commanding the attention of everyone in a room, you are also perfectly happy sitting by yourself playing quietly. On one of our recent bike rides the older kiddos were burning off energy, running around like hooligans, and I looked over to see you sitting quietly in the middle of a grassy field.

Summer is in full swing now and one of our favorite activities lately has been berry picking. The first time I took you out I wasn’t sure what to expect. I brought the stroller just in case I needed to contain you but it didn’t end up being necessary. I put a handful of berries to snack on in your bucket, but once you ate those you discovered you could just follow our friends around, politely asking “More? P’eees!” and they handed you more berries to enjoy.

Peek-a-boo and hide-and-seek are very amusing to you right now. Even if you could disappear simply by covering your hands over your eyes, you’d quickly reveal your location with your high-pitch screeches of delight.

Shoes. Does it really need to be said again? Yep. Some things never change.

A couple months back at your 18 month doctor appointment we were discussing your lack of teeth, well we really didn’t need to be concerned because over the course of the last month, during a couple sleepless weeks you got SIX teeth at once. Your lower lateral incisors as well as your upper and lower first molars poked through, literally doubling the number of teeth in your mouth.

Luckily we were able to distract you from the teething pain by keeping your social calendar filled with exciting activities. Like playing in the fountain at Progress Ridge. Since it hadn’t been too warm this year, you had yet to play in any type of water feature since you’ve been mobile. I wasn’t sure what your reaction would be, maybe cautious and curious, slowly building up enough courage to venture in. But I certainly wasn’t expecting you to point, shout, “Gawter!” (Hadley-ese for “water”) and run full boar into the spraying geyser. You LOVED it. Giggling and running back and forth from one stream to the next deliriously excited that water was just shooting out of the ground and you could be there to enjoy it.

We celebrated the Fourth of July this week and you loved it as well. I knew, being the social butterfly that you are, any holiday that centered around seeing our family and friends would be a hit with you, but you add parades with marching bands, beautifully decorated floats, and people throwing candy, then to top it all off with fireworks? How could anything be better! You were very brave with all the chaos and especially enjoyed the sparklers (probably because it was the only one we actually let you hold)!

Well my sweet girl, it has been another amazing month of milestones, memories, and magical moments. You are truly such an amazing child. It is such a pleasure to be able to spend so much time in your presence and watch as you grow and develop such a beautiful personality. You are so considerate and kind, silly and wild, sweet and cuddly.

All my love,
Mama