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ear Courtland,

Today, while you raced around the hallway outside of Sunny’s ballet class, merrily proclaiming, “BEH-BEE!” at the array of small, baby siblings in your company, parent after parent awed at your sweetness, particularly those bouncing pigtails and that silly toddler voice, and inquired about your age.

When informed that you were just over a year and a half old, there was collective jaw dropping and No way-ing. It is hard to believe that you are not well over two – what with your towering height that is single handedly pushing up the national average. We aren’t kidding when we say that you are OFF the charts. Your weight is comparably advanced – oh how I adore that round, protruding belly – an adorable reminder that despite your refusal to eat most food and preference for flinging it wildly and dramatically on the floor, across the room, or in my face, you are in fact absorbing calories from somewhere. The source remains a mystery, but your size is reflective of its existence. It’s clear that you are going to have one envious athletic body – whether or not you’ll put it to use remains unclear. Will you be sneaking into the house at 5am after a late night of cow-tipping-teenage-country tomfoolery or just waking up to pound protein shakes before 6am pool practice? Whatever it is you do, it will be with the fierce intensity with which you’ve always approached this life.

Much like your height, your language grows by the day and is a constant source of entertainment and mimicry. We love to pronounce “BEH-BEE” and “CHEEEE-TH” with the same nasally E emphasis. Or “Ma-MA!” and “Da-DA!” with that distinct bravado of an Italian Giovanni. Sunny rattled off your favorite words during dinner, “Cheese,” “Mommy,” “Daddy,” “Boat,” “Balloon,” “Moon,” “Sister,” “Please,” and “Baby,” and you didn’t miss a beat in responding with great enthusiasm and pride.

As your language abilities grow, so do your physical ones. You now descend the stairs like a fully-functioning adult. It scares the poop out of me (something I dare say you’d find hilarious given how mightily you laugh and delight in your own flatulence), but I cannot convince you to crawl down backward, or even descend on your bum. No, you walk down the stairs, step by step, holding the railing with one hand, fully upright, with chin tipped high with pride. It’s clear that you want to be able to exist in the world with the same ease and ability as your sister, which is why every night before bath, once your diaper is removed, you insist on being put on the adult potty. You never pee or poop, but just hover over that bowl, pleased to heck that you’ve joined the Porcelain Throne sitting club. I so hope this is a sign of easy potty-training days to come.

My favorite development this month has been your love-affair with books. A few months back, I worried to your daddy that we weren’t reading to you enough. Every time we’d try to sit you down to read a book at bedtime, you’d squirm and fuss and fling yourself out of our laps. You did not have the patience for reading and showed very little interest in joining in our bedtime story routine. This concerned me, since that has always been a part of your sister’s daily life. But this month, something changed – a combination of growing tolerance for activity over 60 seconds in length and an ability to comprehend and enjoy images on a page. We now spend 90% of our time with you flipping through page after page, book after book. You are entertained for hours by our bookshelves of board books. I love that I can settle into a chair and you will shuttle story after story my way, and then you will sit happily and joyously in my lap through each one.

Now, our final activity before bed is reading “Goodnight Gorilla,” far and away your favorite story. You find the balloon, the banana, and the moon on each page, quietly babbling under your breath as you take in each new animal that emerges. My favorite moment is when the old woman in bed awakes with a start to the spread of animals surrounding her and you laugh and laugh, pointing at Gorilla’s cheeky grin and the old woman’s wide, surprised eyes.

Keep that sense of humor always, my love, and life will truly be a joy.

Happy 19 months, sweet girl.

143 Mama