Dear Jayna,

I’m sorry for skipping your last couple of letters—not only because I simply feel bad about not writing them, but also because my failure to write sooner has robbed you of letters that would have been comprised solely of my giddy raves about what a complete and utter delight you are from sunup till sundown. Unfortunately, I waited too long, and now your complete and utter delightfulness—which is still your predominant disposition—has become frequently interrupted by The Screaming.

As a compromise, I will begin by focusing on the subject of Jayna the Cherub before tackling the subject of Jayna the Ear-Splitting, Glass-Shattering, Wince-Inducing Siren.

First, I must thank you for being so cute and funny and adorable and loveable over the past couple of months because, if not for you and your koala-bear-like hugs, I think your brother’s shenanigans would have permanently soured me on this whole parenting thing.

Your smile has changed considerably since I last wrote; your top-front teeth have come out to join the bottom ones, and you have a slew of molars in various stages of emergence. (Your mother recently read something that hypothesized that adults, were they subjected to the discomfort of having so many teeth simultaneously cutting through their gums, would need to be hospitalized. I’ll buy that; I’m sure I’d be first in line.) The choppers make your smile even cuter than it already was, and you smile quite a bit, so … cuteness galore.

Of course, all of those teeth make brushing necessary, which suits you just fine. You love brushing your teeth, an activity you request by making a “chh-chh” sound that roughly mimics the sound of a brush scrubbing teeth. On those occasions that you follow your mother or me into the bathroom—meaning almost every time we enter it—you often stand in front of the sink and say “Peese! Peese!” or “Hepme! Hepme! Hepme!” while stretching your arm and hand in the direction of your toothbrush. When we subsequently point to your toothbrush and ask, “Do you want this?,” you break into a smile and say “Yeah-yeah!” We have many times let you walk or sit around elsewhere in the house with a toothbrush in your mouth because it makes you happy and gets you to stop yelling “Peese!” and “Hepme!”

The previously described “Peese/Hepme/This?/Yeah-yeah” scenario applies not only to your toothbrush, but to whatever object it is that you’ve become momentarily fixated on—which is extremely cute, except when it’s not. The 13,547th “peese” or “hepme” of the day often pushes it into “not” territory. When handed said object, however, you always say “thank you,” a phrase you’ve been using appropriately for months now, much to the shock of more than a few people who have witnessed you doing so. I’m certain their shock is partly caused by their assumption that your mother and I must regularly burn you with an iron in order to make you so consistently polite.

Other gems you’ve added to your fledgling vocabulary include: “IIIIIIII lahddle!” (in response to me saying “IIIIIIII love you!”); “Hunry” (Jaynaese for “hungry”); and the No. 1 most-used phrase as of late, “Mee Mou!” The latter combo refers interchangeably to both Mickey and Minnie Mouse, and few characters make you as excited as those two loveable cartoon rodents (Dorothy the Dinosaur—or, as you call her, “Doe-thee”—is the runner-up). The other day, your mother returned home with you and your brother, and you had in your hand a new, pink, Minnie Mouse toy cellphone, which she bought for you after you became locked in its tractor beam and shouted “Mee Mou! Mee Mou!! Mee Mou!!!” over and over in the store.

It’s worth noting that your infatuation with the Mouses came about as a result of your brother’s fondness for “Mickey Mouse Club House,” one of the half-dozen or so children’s shows we’ve programmed the TiVo to automatically record so we can use them to sedate the two of you when you rise at o-dark-thirty in the morning—but I digress. My reason for pointing this out is that you continue to adore your brother, and the two of you have become more and more playful with each other. Of course, being a 3-year-old boy inherently means that his play often turns into rough-housing, which generally results in you getting knocked on your ass. I admonish him three bazillion times per day to be more gentle with you, but this apparently does not compute—which is mostly OK, since his manhandling often elicits plenty of laughter from you and he hasn’t yet impaled you on anything or cracked your skull open.

Today, while Mommy was at work, you, Zan and I were playing in the yard. At one point, Zan took you by the hand and led you on a walk around the perimeter of the house. Shortly after that, I took the two of you for a walk in our double jogging stroller, and was asking Zan about his new friends at preschool. Seconds after that conversation ended, he said to me, “Daddy, do you know who my best friend is? Jayna.” The happiness your mom and I feel when we see you two bonding with each other defies description. Suffice to say we get all verklempt.

You, like your brother, love music, and love to dance. Your moves are hysterical; you bend and straighten your knees rapidly, and you usually accompany the bouncing by shaking your head and twisting your body from side to side with your arms bent at the elbows and raised between waist and shoulder level. You sometimes mix things up by holding the coffee table with both of your hands as you lift one of your legs and shake your foot or rapidly stomp it up and down, then switch feet and repeat this process with the other. You are two feet tall, semi-toothless, chunky and have questionable balance; throw the previously described dancing into the mix, and, well—that’s comedy.

You continue to be the antithesis of your brother with regard to your ability to put yourself to sleep; your mom and I take turns putting you down at night, a process that involves reading you a book (you’ve grown fond of “Goodnight Moon,” which I love to read to you, partly because it reminds me of reading it to your brother when he was your age), laying you in your crib (a move with which you happily comply), shutting your light off and leaving the room. A chorus of “Hallelujah” should be inserted here.

Your aforementioned bedtime routine essentially highlights one of the unique ways in which first and second children get screwed over: first children get screwed because their parents have no fucking clue what they’re doing, and therefore make mistakes such as spending half the night rocking or, as was often the case with us and Zan, practically waltzing the first child to sleep; second children get shafted because a.) the parents now know better than to be so ridiculously over-attentive, and b.) who has time to waltz the second child to sleep when the first one (until only just recently) requires an intricate, hour-long bedtime ritual that includes remaining by his side until he is fully unconscious and then tip-toeing out of the room while holding one’s breath and praying, “Please, god, do not let the floor creak”?

Now, having said all of that, I have to ask you: What the heck’s been going on the past few weeks? Suddenly, you are erupting many times per day into fits of crying and the most piercing, high-pitched, mega-loud, beyond-shrill screaming ever heard. Dinnertime is probably the time of day at which you’ve displayed this behavior the most, but it can often be brought on by just about anything, including: putting you down when you want to be carried, cutting up a piece of fruit instead of letting you eat it whole, not letting you play with the toilet, or telling you “no” when you are on the verge of doing something that might cause instant death or dismemberment.

While these episodes are disconcerting enough on their own merit, the thing that really worries me is that I am quite sure this is just a glimpse of the ferocity and volume with which you will throw a tantrum when you are a couple of years older. When viewed from that perspective, I suppose I should just enjoy the minimal amount of blood trickling out of my ears, as those future tantrums will likely cause my head to actually explode.

As is always the case, however, the good definitely outweighs the bad, and I continue to be completely smitten with you—which, really, is unavoidable, considering that you are the cutest, sweetest, most loveable little girl who ever set foot on this planet or any other.

I love you, cutie.

Love,
Daddy

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