This morning, you climbed your pajama-clad self up into your Daddy's lap and snuggled in close. "Hold me like a baby," you demanded.
"But you're a toddler," he replied with a smile in my direction.
"No, I'm a baby," you insisted.
He tried to convince you otherwise, but you weren't having it. "I don't want to talk about it," you finally declared in a whining voice, nestling in closer to his chest.
I laughed silently, remembering how just yesterday at the pool when I told you that the snorkle you wanted to play with was someone else's grown-up toy, you announced emphatically, "I want to be a grown-up."
I guess that's part of what being two is all about: wanting to hold on to what is safe and known, wanting at the same time to forge ahead into the new and the exciting. I get that. I still feel that way sometimes.
But Ellie girl, two and a quarter is a special time too, just as you are right now in your pig tails and summer dresses, dancing your way through life with overflowing curiousity and a love of desserts and playgrounds and words and pools.
You will always want to go back. You will always want to go forward. But I will always love you just as you are.