Emma turned 28-months old yesterday. In the last month or so, we have seen an all-new, not necessarily improved, Emma. It’s as if someone reminded her she is two-plus-some and she really needs to do her part upholding the image that two-year olds have around the world and get crackin’ on that “terrible twos” thing.

Maybe the arrival of a sibling is partially responsible for sparking the newfound ornery-ness, but I kind of think we would be experiencing similar changes with or without the new baby. The difference would be that Mike and I would not be distracted, exhausted and hormonal as we try to deal with her.

When I can look at the situation from FAR FAR outside of myself, and think of this phase as her job, something she has to do to develop appropriately and move to the next stage of person-hood, I can feel almost proud. “Man, she is so good at finding opportunities to be independent!” “Wow, she is really skilled at questioning authority and finding her own way of doing things!”

Unfortunately, I am very rarely FAR FAR outside of myself these days, and when that little stinker puts her foot up on the table during dinner – despite my REPEATED warnings not to – my eyes begin to bug out of my head and I begin to speak in tongues and she smiles at me as if it were the funniest thing ever and then announces she would like to go into a time-out… well, those are the moments I have trouble feeling especially sane, let alone proud.

But she is very proud to be a big sister, and every morning comes into our room and wants to see her “baby bruvver”. She especially likes to hold him “on the sofa” and always offers to hold his hand during a diaper change. She loves to give him sweet gentle kisses and lots of hugs. The good news is that she doesn’t seem to hold Will responsible for his arrival at our home, the bad news is that she does hold me responsible from time to time. A few nights after we got home from the hospital she threw a book at my head – an act she seemed to find as shocking and upsetting as I did. As things start to settle down, though, she seems to be forgiving me, and our relationship is getting as back to as normal as possible. When she isn’t putting her feet on the table.

Oh – and she can now count to 11 (before she skips to 14, 16, then back to 6) and can ALMOST sing the entire alphabet, although she likes to jump to the “Now I know my ABC’s…” part after the letter L or so, so we sing it with her to keep her on track.

There are times when Emma does something particularly, shall we say, rebellious? independent? – and she gets a little twinkle in her eye. Sometimes I swear I can see a 14-year-old version of herself in there somewhere, and it completely terrifies me…