All of a sudden, Catie seems huge to me. I guess if you see your kid every day, you don’t notice the gradual tiny changes until enough of them accumulate and smack you in the face one day. But it’s like, wait, there is absolutely no baby left there at all. When did that happen?

For one thing, she’s had this massive growth spurt in the past couple of months. This skirt? Used to be past her knees.

See what I mean? (Actually, you might not be able to tell with the angle of that photo. But trust me, that skirt is now short on her. Like cheerleader-length short.)

I tried to get her to stand against the wall so I could measure her, but it’s difficult to make a 2 year-old stand up straight and still. Still, my estimate is that she’s grown at least an inch. SINCE MAY. She’s also gained four pounds. This kid is massive, I’m telling you.

More than that, though, her verbal development is just exploding all over the place. Some recent developments:
* Her daycare friend Kiersten is about to turn 3, and is having a birthday party. This led to a discussion about ages, so now she walks around saying, “I Catie. I two.”
* She wants to haggle and negotiate everything. If I tell her that no, she can’t bring all of her toys to bed at naptime, she said, “Ah, c’mon, Mom! It’s fun!”
* Last night she was coughing a lot and I wasn’t sure if she was on the verge of an asthma attack or not. I was just starting to think that she might need some albuterol in the nebulizer, when she announced, “Mommy, I need med’cine.” It’s great that she recognizes that the medicine helps her feel better, and that she knows when she needs it, but it also breaks my heart that she needs it at all and has to ask for it.
* Our bedtime routine has become one of constant back-and-forth. She always asks for one more book, and when I tell her no, she asks me to snuggle with her until she falls asleep. I usually say, “Ok, I can only snuggle for a few minutes, because I still need to go clean up.” Last night I was worried about her asthma, so I didn’t lay down any timelines when she asked me to snuggle with her.
After a few minutes, she decided she was done with me, so she gave me a kiss and said, “Ok, Mommy. Bye-bye. You go clean kitchen now.” Um, thanks? Nice to be let off the hook, but I also wondered if she was trying to drop a hint about those dishes in the sink. Like jeez, lady, you gotta do something about this place before we get ants. Nice.

As for potty training, I’ve basically given up on it until after we move, although she seems to be completely potty-trained at daycare. (Thanks, peer pressure, I guess.) Also, at daycare, she’ll generally eat whatever her teacher puts in front of her, and she’ll even feed herself with a spoon. That’s SO not the case at home, but still. It all counts progress toward her being a “big girl,” right?

She still has sleep issues. She’ll go a week or two of sleeping through the night, and then she’ll spend the next two weeks climbing into our bed in the middle of the night. (That’s the phase we’re in right now.) But we’re generally all getting a full night’s sleep, so it’s manageable.

The interesting thing is that with all this development of Catie’s, the idea of having a second baby no longer scares the crap out of me. When we were still in Washington, Dave and I talked about trying for a second baby after we moved to North Carolina (um, a year ago), then we got here and I was like oh no no no, I am sooo not ready for that. We decided, ok, let’s wait a few months, and maybe around Catie’s second birthday, we might think about trying for baby #2. Then that happened and no, still not ready. The idea of being pregnant and dealing with a newborn, plus all of Catie’s neediness seemed impossible, not to mention completely overwhelming.

Now, though, the idea of having a second baby? It seems… do-able. Heck, it even sounds kind of fun. I mean, I know all kids are different, but if we were to end up with another one of these?

I think we’d be doing pretty great.