Dear Isobel:
Yesterday, you turned 20 months old. This seems like it should be a milestone to me, but for no reason whatsoever, so I won’t elaborate on that thought.
For the most part, the past month has, like I predicted, been our hardest one yet. The Twos hit with lack of abandon. You became a full-on limp, stiff, kicking, bucking, biting challenge and instead of learning to deal with it calmly and rationally, I’ve taken a different kind of approach.
I ignore it.
If you feel the need to throw yourself into the kind of convulsions one might only see at certain churches where everyone is filled with the lord’s spirit, well, then I say, spirit on. Just don’t expect me to witness and praise it. Amen.
I’ve taken to letting you catch your breath and calm down before I try to tell you why you may not have the scissors. Still. And while I will repeatedly pull the chair away from the counter top that houses our sharpest knives and mugs of skin-eating acid, I will not keep stopping you from the mundane, ordinary, death-defying stuff that you mostly have a handle on. If you’re averaging less than one fall per week from a chair or couch, I’m not bothering dragging you off anymore, because if I did, when would I get to laugh at you for falling on your butt?
So, I’ve started picking my battles. You’ve had more nights without baths than with. You’ve had more late-reaching naps than none. If you’re going to bed at 10pm with yogurt in your hair and sleeping happily, I choose that over the 8pm, clean as a whistle bedtime, wherein you scream for a half hour, throw things and get appendages stuck in the slats of your crib.
Also new this month is the discovery of a future sibling for you. This means a lot of things like that I will be bitchy, uncomfortable, not willing to pick you up as often, vomiting, tired and even more so dependent your naps – so that I can take one. Helpful hint: if you really wanna screw mommy over, quit napping altogether. It will work immediately.
But here’s one of the many great things about you. You’re kinda crazy. So am I. Fun club, eh? But what both of us being crazy means is that you have taught me that I can do this and I can do it well. I feel as though I don’t have enough patience with you, but the majority of people comment otherwise, as if my patience is this bottle of Smirnoff that never runs dry. Everyone seems to appreciate it.
Usually, I feel as if you’re missing something or not always well. But lately, I’ve come to think that that’s just the mommy in me, not reality. It’s my job to worry if you might be unwell, but it’s also impossible to ignore the signs of your wellness. Your lack of regard for societal politeness, if someone turns you off – you think nothing of glaring at the person who got all up in your face. You stand your furrow-browed ground and I am proud of that. Also proud-making is that anyone, anyone can be worthy of a smile, wave, greeting, good-bye, hug, conversation, part of your snack, and on and on. You are truly social and in the most cute way.
This is one reason I’m happy to live where we do. You think nothing of offering a homeless person some of your $3.99 a box, organic, gluten- and dairy-free rice crackers and a ‘hey!’ whereas other children have already learned to ignore their existence, that they are different from us and worthy of scorn. That’s not how I want to raise you to think and it makes me happy to see that I don’t have to worry about teaching you it’s antithesis.
Remember when I stole echoed Dooce’s thoughts about how maybe you picked me, being the miracle kiddo that you were, because you knew I was available immediately for the job and that I was the one you wanted to hire for it? Well, I’m thinking that your fetal brother or sister (I call brother, now.) might have done the same thing. Because the odds, just like you, were so minascule and yet, here I am, having to pee and avoiding all of the good things in life like vodka and aspartame.
I don’t promise not to let this affect you in your upcoming months. I do promise to keep you aware of what’s going on, even though you don’t yet understand. I will tell you why I am stopping you from running with chopsticks (if I can’t eat sushi, neither can you), bathing you every few days so as not to dry out your skin (cuz your lotion has lavender in it and I’m too lazy to buy new stuff), and fanatically cleaning the house (so that I can give all of your stuff to the new baby, leaving you with nothing! Nothing! NOTHING!)
I love you deeply, even though you and I have differing opinions on corporal punishment.
Mama
