My one and a half year old, my baby girl, my second and last child, is a toddler.
She screams when she doesn’t get her way, pulls on the dog’s ears, eats little bites of kibble out of the dog’s bowl, steals her big brother’s stuffed Mickey Mouse (and laughs when he gets mad), and amuses herself by throwing food all over the floor.
She refuses to eat pancakes or chicken or blueberries, and refuses to NOT eat markers and crayons. She won’t drink water out of a sippy cup, but she absolutely will drink water out of the sudsy, slightly dirty bathtub—and if she’s not taking a bath, the dog’s water bowl will do for hydration.
She won’t even look at applesauce pouches designed specifically for toddlers, but she loves eating a big bowl of applesauce with an adult spoon and smearing it all over the rug.
She won’t wear rain boots when it’s raining outside, but insists on wearing nothing but a diaper and rain boots inside on the recently cleaned couch.
Her hair is getting long and mullet-ish and her bangs are starting to get into her eyes. Yet every time I try to give her a ponytail or headband or hair flip, she pulls it out in half a second flat. Sometimes if I hide the ponytail in the back of her head it’ll stay for about a minute, but she inevitably finds it and pulls it out, along with about 10 strands of fuzzy little hair.
She calls me “mommy” and she calls my husband “mommy” too, which gives me great satisfaction.
Sometimes she grabs her pink jacket and shoes and points at the front door. If I go along with it and take her outside, she’ll walk me straight to the park down the block and climb up the stairs and onto the slide all by herself, then yell “ducks!’’ until I take her to the nearby pond.
Once in a blue moon she’ll rest her head on my shoulder while I’m holding her, but it lasts about three seconds before she squirms and toddles off to knock over her brother’s tower of blocks or scribble on the floor with a Sharpie.
She screams “Moana” and “wawa” (her other word for ‘Moana’), and points to the TV whenever she feels the urge for a television fix. If we don’t turn on the TV, she throws herself on the floor and cries big crocodile tears. Sometimes we’re strong and sometimes we give in and turn on Moana to get some peace. And every time we do that, we’re reminded that a very similar pattern is quite possibly what led her big brother to grow into a stubborn 3 year old who fights tooth and nail for everything he wants and never takes “no” for an answer. But still, we want the peace and we want the tears to stop and we want to see her little face break into a grin.
She’s not a baby anymore. My son calls her “the baby” and I often do, too, but aside from her diapers and inability to eat a grape that’s not cut up; there’s very little about her that feels baby-like. So I don’t have a baby and I never will again and that’s that.
It’s almost enough to make me want a third child. Almost.