A Tale of Two Toddlers

It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. It is Life with a Two-Going-on-Two-and-a-Half.

The Best of Times
* The days when I go up to get her from her afternoon nap and she's either still asleep (sleeping babies steal my heart every.dang.time) or just waking up and is all warm and snuggly. "Me still sleepy, Mama" she tells me and then melts into my lap and onto my shoulder as we snuggle in the rocking chair before going to find the boys downstairs. Best!Ever!Moments!
* Watching her attend to her little brother. If he's upset, she tells him, "Hey, Buddy! Hey, Buddy! I'm here. It's OK!" and when it's time to put him down for a nap, she'll grab a baby doll or a stuffed animal (or both) and cart them around the room in the dark as I do the same with LT and we both sing "Fwinkle, Fwinkle, Fwinkle Star" to our babies. She's also good about the post-nap follow up question: "How your sleep, Linky?"
* Littles with Allergy Nose aren't much fun, but the influx of runny clear stuff from her face has also meant an influx in her requests for a "cwean necklace" to wipe her snot. That might just be my favorite Toddlerism of all time.
* Also fun in the lingo world? Menk-goose for Music has morphed to good old Mucus (again with the snot - sorry) and boy, does she love Mucus. And boy do I love to watch her dance!
* "I do yoga!" as she flips into down dog or brings her knee up and strikes tree pose at the most random of times (the best being when she and her big brother decided to yoga on their chairs during lunch which of course led me to say that while you can be a chair in yoga, you cannot do yoga on your chair while you eat!).

The Worst of Times
* The furrowed eyebrows glaring at me through hair that she refuses to let me pull up out of her face (even if I get a pony in, it never stays there for long) as she tells me oh-so-emphatically, "NO!" even when I've just told her that she's getting her way about something. No, really. Tonight she told me at dinner that she wanted a bath and when I said, "Yes! You get a bath tonight!" she responded with righteous indignation and, again, grumpy eyebrows.
* Public defiance. And so it begins. Instead of just tagging along as we run here and there, she is now on her own mission which often includes wanting to enter/exit the van a certain way (which typically means through my door that she will shut herself, thankyouverymuch) and possibly not wearing her shoes (they come off in all manners of places at all manners of time). All of this lollygagging means more prep time for me to get out the door to go say, anywhere, but it spells disaster when it involves getting to preK pickup to collect Harrison and she's just not feeling it. A friend watched a full on pick-her-up-in-one-arm-while-carrying-the-baby-(and her shoes)-in-the-other moment when we tried to leave the Adventure Challenge play area at the Y last week because Little Miss just wasn't ready to go. Why must the leaving be so, so hard?!
* Perhaps this is redundant after the first two points, but holy mother of tears. The tears! And shrieks! They can come in an instant and are instantly ear splitting. And then they're gone. And repeat, repeat, repeat. It's a good thing toddlers are bendy and resilient because with all the flinging to the floor they do with their bodies, it's amazing they don't hurt themselves more (although she does enough face plants and wipe outs these days that I'm thinking a crash helmet might be in order).

And there you have it. Dickens, The Days of our Lives and Growing Pains, all in one (huh? Did I really just lump classic Lit, soaps, and sitcoms, all in one? whoa.). Love her spunky spirit, though, and the fact that her pants are often on backwards and her shoes on the wrong feet (if they are on at all). She is finding her way in the world and I am honored to have a front row seat for the show.