Francesca Turns Two

Francesca is now two. Her current battlecry is "let's do it!" Her regular advice to herself (and others) is to "try another one" and "try again." And she continues to employ her long-time (and successful) negotiation strategy of asking for something while making you think it was really your idea - for example, "book? okay!" or "more pasta? okay!" or "bathing suit? fish? oooooookay!!"

As you can tell from the pictures (semi-dressed while eating, bathing suit in backyard), it's been rather warm around here for much of the last two months. We spent many of the hotter days in our backyard with Francesca and our neighbors, Taylor and Ryan, jumping around in the wading pool and getting squirted by little plastic fish. Now that it's too cool for the pool, the fish continue to play and squirt in the bathtub.

The pictures in the middle are from Francesca's second birthday party. Her party headlined the Bubble Lady, from whom no one was safe. Francesca very much enjoyed her party and discovering the presents in the subsequent days but she was mildly disappointed for weeks afterward that the house wasn't always festooned with balloons and filled with bubbles. A gift she particularly enjoyed and continues to enjoy are her Calico Critters (for the uninitiated, they are little animal families, furniture, etc.) - Francesca is utterly fascinated by moving them around and imagining they are having dinner (for some reason, always "fish!" and "cucumber!"), going to bed, or playing on a seesaw or swing.

Francesca the two-year-old wants to draw and color at pretty much any given time and the painting in the midst of the pictures was made just after Francesca turned two. Right around this time was when she became acutely interested in painting and she also stopped eating for a few days. We think the hunger strike may have been due to early pain from two-year molars but, more likely, it was Francesca's go at being a starving artist. However, it didn't last long - at least not the starving part.

Another one of her new passions is a toddler gymnastics class she is taking at UC Berkeley - the Bear Cubs I class, where she gets to jump on a massive trampoline, roll around like a bear cub, and practice her somersault. Her continuing passions include endless books, the zoo, and the Lawrence Hall of Science, which she always greets by yelling "science! yay!" and being sure to say hello to the people at the check-in desk.

Francesca can now count up to 15 (then usually skips to 17 then 20, at which point she proclaims "counting!") and can recognize numbers from 0 to 11. Some obsessive watching of a Big Bird video led her to learn and be able to recognize the letters of the alphabet and she thinks the ABC song is rockin'.

Finally, as you can see from the bottom photos, Francesca has taken to demanding "sun-glasses!" This request happens at least once daily but only indoors, perhaps because putting sunglasses on necessitates an immediate trip to the nearest mirror.

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