Emmy turns two!

How to sum up the last two years of Emmy? 

I have fallen down on the blog job, so I don’t have posts to refer back to. I see that the last posts of her were pictures that were taken when she was a few months old and Wessy was three-ish. A lot has happened in the intervening twenty months or so, too much to summarize, so I will just try to capture as best I can what she is like now. 

Physically, Emmy is a peanut. She is very short and very small for her age, though her head is the size of a normal two year old’s. More than just being short, she has disproportionately short legs. She has a round face, dimples and giant eyes. The overall impression is one of a little stuffed animal. Though she is physically tiny, her personality is anything but. 

She is much more independent than Wessy was when he was two. When we go to the playground, she is off to the races as soon as we get there, no need to hold Mommy’s hand or check in. The other day, I momentarily lost sight of her at one of our neighborhood playgrounds that has a very high, very slick slide that Wessy only recently felt comfortable going down by himself. I scanned the playground looking for her, before seeing her (of course) swinging on the bar above the very high slide, kicking her feet around and then launching herself like a little rocket seal.  

She will hang from monkey bars, swing on the stove handle and jump off of play structures with no hesitation and even less warning. I have learned (the hard way) that if she says “whoa” or holds her arms out like she is about to hug you it means she is about to jump off whatever she is standing on.  I have also learned (again, the hard way) that if we ride the bike to the playground I should keep her helmet on her while she plays, just in case. Due to her adventurous nature, she is prone to lots of little spills and tumbles. Most of the time she will just say a quick UH OH and get herself back up, no crying, because she is very busy and can’t afford to lose time. 

She is preternaturally gifted in riding a scooter and has been since she was sixteen months old. I tried and tried to get Wessy to ride a scooter when he was two, two and a half even, and he just wasn’t into it (He’s great at it now.). But Emmy picked it up instantly when I got her a scooter at the beginning of quarantine. She can propel herself rapidly and can turn pretty well too. The only thing she doesn’t have quite yet is tapping the brakes, though she will put her foot down to slow herself.  It has been great fun letting her scoot and watching people around her be stunned, asking me “How old is she??” 

When she doesn’t want what you have to offer, she takes the simple yet definitive action of slapping it out of your hand, sometimes accompanied by saying “No, no, no.” When she doesn’t get exactly what she wants, she goes nuclear. She literally shakes with rage. She will cry so hard she can barely breathe, let her whole body go limp and then need to be laid softly on the ground so she doesn’t fall over. She will probably end up horribly spoiled, because it is simply too unpleasant not to give her what she wants. I commented to Stevo that Emmy is kind of impossible in that way, how she simply doesn’t tolerate not getting what she wants, and he looked at me like, Well what did you expect. Touche. 

She is also much more meticulous than I recall Wessy being at this age. When we get to the landing outside the front door, she will take her shoes off and empty them of sand. Once she got some tennis balls out of the bottom of her stroller, and when I asked her to put them back, she actually did. She has a balance board that needs to be used on the carpet. Once she set it down on the hardwood floor and I told her to only use it on the carpet. She picked it up and carried it back onto the carpet. 

Notwithstanding her general thoughtfulness, she does think that anything that was designed to be safe for babies and toddlers is a crock of shit. She insists on using full-sized adult utensils and a glass tumbler at meals. She has a little balance bike that is just a little bit too big for her to safely ride, but that does not stop her from trying to do so, again and again. She wants to wear my clothes, Wessy’s clothes, really any clothes but her actually Emmy-sized clothes. Which by the way are still size 12-18 months because she is tiny. Any actual size 2T clothes are comically large on her. 

She is much like her brother in one regard, though. Neither of them is/was very cuddly at this age. Wessy is actually pretty cuddly nowadays but at age two he was about as snuggly as a bag of weasels. Similarly, Emmy is not one for idle snuggling. Depending on how tired she is, she will variably tolerate little hugs and kisses. However, she’s not one to be overly interested in embracing or being lovey. Again, she is busy. It does make it all the sweeter, though, when she gives me a rare, spontaneous hug or kiss.  

She’s had a somewhat cloistered life so far, being that a full third of her life so far has been in Covid times. Up to now, most of her universe has been contained in our household and the places we can get to on a bike. She hasn’t gotten to go to all the classes, playdates and field trips that I took Wessy on between the ages of one and two, though I’m not sure he remembers or cares. Notwithstanding, she has gotten plenty of time outside, lots and lots of bike rides, playtime with her older brother and the adoring attention of two different au pairs. The re-opening of playgrounds in October was a revelation to her, as was our recent acquisition of a puppy.

Everything will change in December, though, because (God willing) she is going to start preschool. I think she will love it. She seems to really like other kids, from what little experience she has of them. Plus Wessy goes to preschool and she wants to do anything he does. She is going to start learning Mandarin. Wessy didn’t start at preschool until he was three and already fluent in Spanish. Emmy isn’t exactly fluent in any language yet, so it will be interesting to see how it all develops.

Right now she has many, many words in both English and Spanish and a few two-word phrases (most notably, those related to the puppy: “Good grrll Tayrr” [Good girl Taylor], “No Tayrr.” She also says “Adios Mama” and “Emmy Pizza.” She is an excellent mimic and will frequently repeat words after you, especially when reading to her. She is especially inclined to mimic Wessy. Most days at dinner, it’s an echo chamber, albeit with an echo that has much poorer enunciation.

Speaking of the puppy, Emmy really, really likes her. She enjoys approaching her bed and petting her with her foot and showering her with "good grrl Tayrs." She will happily tolerate Taylor licking her and thinks that playing fetch with Taylor is hilarious. When Emmy throws the ball for Taylor, they generally both run after it.

Sometimes I do feel a little sad that I haven’t had as much one-on-one time with Emmy as I had with Wessy. I suppose that is the reality of her being the second child. She certainly doesn’t hurt for attention, and I am lucky to generally have a decent amount of time off of work to spend time with her.  I’m lamenting the fact that she’s less and less a baby every day while simultaneously enjoying her emerging personality. It will be sad when neither of our kids is really a baby anymore. At the same time, we are starting to see how our lives might change for the better when both kids can reliably feed, bathe, dress and toilet themselves, and it’s kind of exciting. For now, we are just trying to enjoy every day.