Dear Jonah,
You have had so many new developments lately... It seems like everyday you do something new and delightful.  Besides all of your new words, you are also doing some new and hilarious things.  You love animals and animal books. When we are reading animal books, you make all the animal sounds and then you pat your leg to call them to you, like you do with Tuk. You also love to make everything kiss... the llama kisses the giraffe, I kiss the turtle, the dinosaurs kiss, the cars kiss.... And we love to give all the toys pretend food and you say.. "num, num." But I think my favorite new development is your newly found empathy.  We first noticed it when you were watching Nemo. You kept running out during the "scar-wa" parts when the shark would chase the fish. But it has moved beyond you feeling scared to all kinds of emotions.  You can sense when characters are sad, sometimes you even cry with them.  When they are excited or happy, you smile and look at us. It melts my heart.  But it goes even beyond that.  I know that kids pick up on their parent's emotions, but when it comes to the two of us, it's almost scary. If you are asleep and I am upset... you wake up and cry. Sometimes dad tries to calm me down so you will stay asleep. Even if I am whispering.. you still seem to sense it somehow.  I have never had to keep myself and my feelings so much in check.  I can almost guarantee that you are feeling whatever I am feeling. It has been a refining and edifying experience.  Tonight while I was laying by you, I was focusing to bring my anxiety down and to find peace so you could fall asleep. Then I started thinking... "is this my anxiety, or Jonah's?" Either way, I felt I could help us move through it. But it has changed my way of thinking about emotions... like they are their own entity... and we never really know where or who the source is until we take sometime to self reflect. But I love that we can sense what another person is feeling, especially if we are emotionally close to that person. It makes it so we don't have to live our emotional lives alone.  I especially love that the two of us can help each other this way. My little Pisces... ruled by emotion. :)