What's Not To Love?



Okay, friends, this is my almost two year old. She is wild and spunky and crazy and I love her to pieces. I don't know if it's because she is the 3rd little girl in our family and just has to act out to get attention, but she is more trouble than my other two combined. She also brings laughter to our home more than anyone else.

For example, she has a thing against wearing clothes. (As you can see in the photo-- no pants.) She loves to strip herself down and run naked in circles around our kitchen table. For 10 minutes. And all the while I'm thinking, "Please don't pee on the floor, please don't pee on the floor." I'm really hoping this is a phase that she will grow out of.... not that I wouldn't be proud to be the mother of the girl who streaks at football games or anything.

Another frustrating antic of this little one is how she gets rid of food she doesn't want to eat. Here are the ones we see almost daily:

1. Chuck it across the table at Daddy's head.

2. Slide it under her chair to the dog. Seriously, we've tried training the dog not to beg for food while we're at the table, but until we can train our kid not to give it to her, I don't think we have a chance with the dog.

3. Put it in her mouth, chew, then lean way over and spit it onto the floor.

Little Darling also perseverates. Right now she loves babies (okay, she's always loved babies, but right now it's really intense) So, if she sees a baby, she cries out "Baby, baby" until she's holding it. Not such a big deal when we're at home and I can give her the doll, but how about when we took the girls to see Tangled this weekend and my daughter had a panic attack that she couldn't hold Baby Rapunzel? Or how she got into an altercation (that being the grown up way of saying fist fight) in nursery when an innocent little girl took her baby?

The child is a problem solver. She loved getting into the cupboard under the sink where we keep the dishwasher detergent, so in an effort to avoid becoming best friends with Poison Control, we installed those little baby latches on the cupboards. It took her two days to figure out how to push down and open the doors so that she could again mouth the dish soap. Obviously, I thought, the solution was to put the soap up high out of her reach.... but no. She just drags a chair over from the table, climbs onto the counter, and grabs the soap again. She has realized that she might not be tall enough to reach what she wants, but she can always figure out a way to climb up. That kind of problem solving ability will come in handy later in life, right, like if she's ever trapped on a deserted island?

My girl has a love/hate relationship with the snow. She gets so excited to see it out the window, begs to don all her winter gear (which takes about 30 minutes because she insists on doing it all by herself), then rushes out into the cold. And realizes it is cold. Touches the snow and realizes it is both wet and cold. Realizes she'd much rather be back inside where she's warm. Repeat the 30 minutes to remove winter gear. 

So, yes, there are days when I think she might drive me crazy. All that energy trapped inside a little body, without more than 25 words to express what she's thinking.... it probably drives her crazy too.

And yet, I love her in a way that crushes me. I hold her in my lap and run my finger across her smooth little cheek and feel like my heart might burst. I give her Eskimo kisses and she laughs and cries out "More, nose, more." I read her book after book after book and she never tires of sitting there, cuddled by my side. I am her Mommy, her favorite friend, her comfort object, her world.

And she is mine.