Gabriella is two.  Her birthday came at the close of the year and these are just a handful of shots just before her birthday that I managed to process last night.  Thinking about her growing up leaves with with such an odd feeling, one where excitement and apprehension mingle in lazy pools of time.  Most of my life feels like a static backdrop, the same paths are run down nearly ever day at the same time and pace that I often forget that cycle of day and night marks time passing and it is until I sit down and look, really look, at my daughter do I feel how much as moved by.

Gabi is become very much her own person.  She is a persistent communicator, hunting for the right words and when that fails appropriating or developing her own as she sees fit.  This past month she discovered Christmas and in particular those wonderfully quaint Rankin/Bass stop motion movies which we have now watched enough so that the songs are firmly gripping our ears and refusing to let go.  By far Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is her favorite character and she has gone as far as renaming him to suit her own purposes.  Kadoo is the name she gave him and largely the only one she’ll respond to if asked whether she would like to watch his movie or read his book.

She plays endlessly in the toy kitchen that we toiled for three hours Christmas Eve.  She makes soup for sipping, and pizza for snacking and it is not unusual to find a stuffed animal cooling in the freezer, defrosting in the microwave, or slowly roasting in the oven.  Her world is malleable and imaginative and I would not change that for anything.