Dear Mackenzie: You are just too cute
Dear Mackenzie,
You are now 32 months old — going on 32 years. Well, no, thankfully you’re not that wise or mature yet, but you are pretty incredible. You’ve now been to a second funeral, sitting still and mostly quiet for the entire day (with a little help from YouTube on daddy’s phone and some tiny gummy bear packages from Dan & Henny). You brought a tiny bit of sunshine to an otherwise extremely down day, in a way that only you could.
You had your first splinter extraction a couple of weeks ago. It was just a tiny little thing in the bottom of your foot that you must have picked up from running around outside barefoot. But you told when it started bothering you, helped me find the minuscule thing in your foot and let me extract it without putting up any fight. You’re a tough little one, although you do love to be cuddled when something isn’t going your way, or you fall down because your feet get ahead of you (which happens quite a bit lately).
You are now officially best friends with our neighbor, Sarah, who is too shy to play with most other kids. But we spent half a day over there recently and she finally warmed up to you enough to leave her mother’s side and come play in her playhouse with you. It was so sweet. You’re still not really to the point where you play a lot with other kids, just side-by-side, and watching you play with kids who speak another language is always interesting because you guys are speaking different languages — literally. But you’re still picking up a lot more German lately because you’ve been hearing it more and watching a bit of German TV (ah Löwenzahn). You also learned your first Bavarian word this past weekend –I won’t embarrass myself by trying to spell it but it basically means Tschüs.
You are picking up so many words every day in both German and English, and really just talking up a storm. You talk a lot of the time just to yourself and your “friends” the stuffed animals, but you talk to us all quite a bit of the time as well. You also often refer to yourself in the third person which is pretty funny. And your daddy has started teaching you your last name so you’ll know it in case you need it at some point (like if you happen to get lost).
Your hair is getting so long!
Your eating habits are still a bit lacking although you can eat your weight in rotisserie chicken. But at least you’re eating something even if it’s not tons of it. When you decide you no longer want to eat something, you walk over to me with your mouth open so you can spit it out…in my hand. Really lovely I have to say.
You have also decided that Ayla needs to share your food and I catch you almost every morning sharing your yogurt with the dog. I think it’s at least partially about being able to watch her lick it off of your tiny spoon. But you and Ayla are totally connected at the hip anyway so I’m sure part of it is just wanting to make sure that Ayla doesn’t get left out. And hey, she needs someone looking out for her too. 
You also really love walking Ayla on leash and holding onto her harness. Most of the time, Ayla manages to remember that you are there holding on to her. But she has spun you around a few times when you’ve held onto her harness. Thankfully no one was even remotely injured. And we keep a very vigilant watch out for oncoming doggy visitors since Ayla can be quite unpredictable.
You are getting a little less opinionated about your clothing and shoes. Actually that’s not true. You are just becoming more willing to try on other things. You finally started putting on short sleeved clothes and sandals from time to time. And you are starting to take more and more interest in putting on your own shoes or clothes. But if you decide you don’t like something, no amount of discussion is going to get you to put it on — and since I was exactly the same about clothes, I don’t know that this is going to make life any easier for us in the future. But hey, at least you know what you like.
You are also so tall already that your pants are way too huge around the waste but far too short on the bottom. It puzzles me why clothing designers haven’t managed to tackle the issue of making tall kids clothing since it was an issue even when I was little. I was teased relentlessly about my high water jeans, and I have to admit, I’m still quite sensitive about it.
You have a memory like an elephant and can remember all sorts of things that you’ve seen or done in the last few months only one. For example, at your Oma & Opa’s you remember the pink ball they have for you, the green umbrella they usually have on the patio but didn’t because of the icky weather and the name of the cat they share with their neighbors. The cat name doesn’t surprise me too much — but the the rather small other stuff was pretty amazing to us because we couldn’t have told you those umbrellas were green in a million years.
You have been missing your daddy a lot lately because he had to travel a lot last week and you didn’t get to see him most nights. You didn’t want to go to oma & opa’s house until you were absolutely certain that daddy was coming too. In fact, you’re probably the most attached to us right now as you’ve been in a long while.
You have been getting a little car sick about 45 minutes after we start out in the car. I still haven’t determined if it’s the sorta bumpy ride of the sporty Porsche, all the reading you do in the car or just a phase you’re going through. You’ve so far only really thrown up once but we have to keep an eye on you to see how that develops. It could also be that you figured out how to manipulate the system and that if you look like you’re going to hurl, we pull over the car, cuddle you and give you some soda to drink. Very sneaky.
You also finally took a nap in the car on our trip down to Bavaria this past weekend and seem to slowly be understanding that you are not going to miss anything exciting at all if you close your eyes for a bit. While we were traveling this weekend, woke up when we stopped at a gas station. You opened your eyes and immediately said, “Please have-a burger?” You hadn’t even seen the Burger King around the corner but you knew just what you wanted.
Your tiny while rabbit is still the best travel buddy around and he is not allowed to leave the Porsche. In fact, he barely even gets played with. The pour guy is apparently just exhausted all the time because if you let us take him out, he’s supposed to go back up above the “oh #+t/” handle on the ceiling within a few minutes so that he can keep on sleeping.
You are totally opinionated and headstrong — but in a good way. You know what you want, you do your best to express it, and you want to be able to make choices about the things you do and put on…which I certainly don’t have a problem with.
You also had your very first potty success with a tiny peepee in the toilet, which happened after you came in the room and said you needed to go to the bathroom. I know that one day it’s just going to click, and we’re trying to remind you that you’re getting to be a big girl now and big girls that go to kindergarten use the toilet, so maybe we’ll have you out of those diapers by November 1st after all.
And we may just end up getting you a real big girl bed before we even transition your crib to a bed. I know we probably should have done that already, but we still haven’t totally made your room 100% safe for you to rummage around in by yourself. And you haven’t tried to do anything crazy like crawl out of the crib either. But we noticed the other day that your feet are growing closer and closer to the end of the mattress. Hard to image that since just a couple years ago we could have laid you in there sideways and you wouldn’t have been able to touch anything.
You are our sunshine and the life of the party. And even though we’re not planning to give you a sibling, watching you with other kids, with Ayla and with your toys, you would probably be a stellar big sister. You’ve got so much compassion and understand of others already — it’s just amazing
My deepest love,
Mommy
Tiffany is an American who has been living in Germany with her husband since 2001. The two are self-proclaimed "Self-Reliant Yuppies" who are in their early-30's and bought an 1830's farmhouse several years ago, which they have been turning into a more sustainable and green dream house. Two cats, a Newfie and their 2 year old daughter enjoy the adventure with them. Tiffany enjoys cooking, rock climbing, lux-camping trying to turn her black thumbs green and taking road trips. Visit the 
Mackenzie is ADORABLE! Your post brought tears to my eyes. My baby girl, Destiny, is about to have her 13th birthday. Where did the time go? I sometimes grieve for the little girl lost, yet honor the young lady she is becoming. Just a note from one Mom to another: I have written notes/letters to my daughter from the day she was born. These little letters are being put in a book which I will have bound and give to her on her 18th birthday. Your posts about Mackenzie would made an awesome book for her as well. Thanks for sharing.
Oh my Winkie! You and Stefan have raised such an intelligent perfectly lovely child! I can hardly wait to see all of you.
By the way…you used to do the same thing with your food when you had had enough…I remember distinctly you spitting a half-eaten Snickers barinto my hand and getting rather upset because I put it in the trash!
It is wonderful that you are taking time to make these memories so that we (and one day Mackie) can see her as she grows.
I love you…Mom