Dear Jayna,

Wow. My goodness, how you’ve changed since my previous letter to you. As I read that letter a moment ago and looked at the pictures that accompany it, I realized that you were still a baby back then; you are very much a little girl now.

Of course, I can’t talk about you without talking about that hair of yours, which startled me so when you were born. Nine months ago, it was still oscillating between reddish and strawberry blonde-ish, but what it wasn’t doing was getting very long. Since then, it has settled firmly in the strawberry-blonde column, and has grown out so that you now have long, girly hair that hangs in your eyes and drives you a little nuts. Thankfully, you have finally become accepting of barrettes and/or elastics holding your hair out of your face; as of a few months ago, you were still determined to immediately rip from your head any kind of device we had placed in your hair—regardless of how much of it you might yank from your scalp in the process.

Watching you grow and develop has made me so thankful that your mother and I chose to have more than one child (and, incidentally, so thankful we also chose to have less than three), because it has been, and continues to be, remarkable to see just how different you and your brother are from each other.

Zan has always been very big for his age; you are average for yours, if not petite. Zan has always been verbally and intellectually advanced for his age; you, until only just recently, could generally be relied upon to answer the question “What color is this?” with “Yellow” … even if the item you were describing was a fire engine. The one color you had the most success with was orange; however, also until only just recently, you would say that the color of an orange item was “orange juice.” Close enough. Counting? Same thing. I often read you “Goodnight Moon” at bedtime. When I do the “And there were three little bears, sitting on chairs” part, you usually like to point and count how many of those bears are sitting on those chairs. It goes something like this: “Ooooone … twooooo … threefoursixsevennine.” You say this while simultaneously pointing at each of the bears in random order, more than once.

On the flip side, whereas Zan has always been in the fast lane cerebrally, he was, at your age, much more cautious about getting physical. He seemed to have a particularly high regard for his own safety, and would often err on the side of observing other children doing something that might cause bodily harm before attempting it himself, if at all. You, on the other hand, would gladly throw yourself off the roof without the slightest thought of first checking to see if perhaps there was something relatively forgiving on which you could land. This has caused your mother and I to miss an occasional heartbeat (me more than her, since I’m far more neurotic and cautious than she is, which—hey!—sounds a lot like how Zan is compared to you … hmmmm).

Because you use your body with far more abandon than your brother did, you are more clumsy than he was; I have never seen a human being trip and fall to the floor with as much frequency as you do, and, often times, it occurs because you have tripped over … nothing.

Among the other interesting ways in which you differ from the 2-year-old version of your brother is how much more cooperative you usually are. To wit:

When Zan was your age, things often went like this:

“Zan, please [insert any type of simple request here].”

“No.”

“Zan, I’m asking you nicely to please [simple request].”

“NO. I AM NEVER DOING THAT!”

“Zan, I’m going to count to three, and if you don’t [simple request], you’re going to sit on the step for a timeout: one … two … three … OK, go sit on the step.”

“NOOO!”

[Cue massive crying and screaming fit.]

With you, it’s usually more like this:

“Jayna, please [simple request].”

“No.”

“Jayna, I’m asking you nicely to please [simple request].”

“No! [pause] … OK, Daddy.”

[Cue me keeling over in shock.]

Similarly shocking is the fact that you will sometimes, at the end of the day, announce that you would like to be put to bed. The first time you did this, your mother had to resuscitate me with a defibrillator. You see, your brother, up until the past year or so, battled against bedtime as though it was a death sentence, and couldn’t fall asleep unless your mother or I sat next to his bed … and god forbid he wake up in the middle of the night to find that we had the audacity to retreat to our own bedroom for the evening. In contrast, you often tell us to leave you alone once we’ve put you down in your crib, and if you aren’t able to fall right to sleep, you will hum and sing and roll around and play contentedly until sleep overtakes you. It is a fairly miraculous sight to a set of parents who thought such a thing wasn’t possible.

Also, whereas your brother would usually refuse to let anyone other than Mommy put him to bed, you, more often than not, want me to put you down, which has been really good for my bruised ego. Your bedtime ritual includes having me sit in the rocking chair in your room with you in my lap, lying back against me while I read you two books, which are often some combination of “Good Night Moon,” “How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?,” “Miss Spider’s Tea Party,” “Twinkle-Twinkle,” “Dora Goes to the Beach” and “Ellison the Elephant.” Once I’ve finished reading them, you like me to cradle you in my arms, turn out the light and sing “You Are My Sunshine” … though I am only allowed to sing the first verse; if I attempt to sing or hum a second verse, you tell me “No more, Daddy” (and, to clarify: yes, you are the one who insists I sing it to begin with). You then point to your crib, kiss me goodnight, lay down (usually on your belly) and wait for me to cover you up with your favorite pink blanket. After having spent so much of your brother’s first three years in a state of full-on anxiety and anguish when bedtime rolled around, putting you to bed has been, as your social-worker mother would say, a truly “corrective experience” for me. Thank you.

However … while putting you down is, comparatively, a massive piece of cake, you and your brother both share the same predisposition to wake up way too early in the morning. Your mother and I have instated a “6 a.m.” rule, whereby everyone must stay in bed until that time, but you usually start waking up and making noise at around 5, if not eaerlier—which probably wouldn’t be such a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that your mother and I feel compelled to sleep with two audio-video monitors in our room that broadcast the sounds and images of you and your brother in bed. Despite the fact that humans have survived for tens of thousands of years without such devices, your mother and I just can’t bring ourselves to turn the damn things off for fear that the one night we do so will be the one night that a real monster will actually come out of your closet and devour you, and we won’t hear your cries for help. It is a guilt we could never live with, so we instead have slept in bite-sized snatches for the past four years, waking every time one of you makes the slightest peep.

And speaking of sleep: You still sleep with a pacifier—which you (and, in turn, we) call “pahpiece.” You are in love with your pahpiece. You are like Maggie Simpson come to life. You would suck on it all day and night if we let you—which, for a short while, we were, but we have since pulled you back to having it only when you’re in bed or riding in the car. Part of our reason for doing this is that you have snaggle teeth, and we believe it is likely because you spent about 90 percent of the past year with that thing jammed into your mouth. When we finally weaned you off of it, we were amazed to see how far your verbal skills had progressed during the months that you had incessantly sucked on that thing and communicated by either grunting or speaking unintelligibly while clenching pahpiece between your now-crooked teeth.

You and Zan still love playing together, and enjoy pretending that you’re running a restaurant, or an ice-cream stand, or a hotdog stand, or riding in a boat, or playing with Dora and Diego, or providing medical treatment to any number of your stuffed animals, of which you have enough to populate a large zoo. You also love playing in the yard together, which, this summer, has frequently involved turning the water table into a habitat for your plastic aquatic creatures. Of course, you also have your little battles with each other several times per day, most of which are caused by one of you picking up some unattended toy, the mere picking up of which causes the other of you to suddenly need that same exact toy more than life itself, despite the fact that we have more toys from which to choose than I have ever seen housed under one roof.

I have always believed in the theory that both nature and nurture combine to determine a child’s disposition and behavior, but, prior to having two children, I assumed that the “nurture” component was the more influential of the two. You and your brother have shown me that the “nurture” component comes in a distant second; your personalities and tendencies are divergent almost across the board, and it seems to have little to do with what your mother and I have done.

While the nature-trumps-nurture argument is most predominantly displayed through how different you two are as people, it has also cropped up in smaller ways—to include your play preferences: Zan, despite my best efforts to the contrary, has always been inclined to play games that involve mock violence between “good guys” and “bad guys” … while you are completely drawn to pretending you are a mother to your various baby dolls, or pretending you are a princess (you love Cinderella—whom you call “Rella”) and, every time we dress you in a skirt, you announce, “I Rella, Daddy!,” and spin around to demonstrate just how dainty and princess-like you are. When it came time to plan for your birthday party, we asked you what kind of theme you wanted. The answer? “My lilponyparty!” So a My Little Pony Party, it was.

Just as I had always thought nurture trumped nature, so, too, had I always assumed girlish behavior and boyish behavior were largely learned rather than hardwired. You have set me straight on both counts.

You are sweet, and you are happy, and funny, and love to laugh and smile and play and give hugs, and you are just the most delightful little girl I have ever seen, and I am so thrilled that you are my daughter. Thank you for that.

I love you, Sweetie Peetie.

Love,

Daddy

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