Dear Future Grandchildren,
There will come a time when your mother will look right at you and say, "I hope you end up with a child just like you!" I'm writing to tell you that that time is 23 months. As you approach your second birthday, your poor mother with no hair, stubs for fingernails, and bite marks in unmentionable places, will weep with gratitude for your wonderfulness as she wishes for you too to know the pleasure of a child just like YOU.
I'm pretty sure that this is when your mother will call me (or buzz me through her tooth transponder or whatever we have 30 years from now) and demand that I come move in. I know because I have called Clanna every night for the last week asking her when she is coming and asking how young is too young to send a minor on an aircraft unaccompanied?
And I will laugh, and I will move heaven and earth to help her because LORDY will I remember. And then, I will remind her that you are merely intoxicated on the freedom that being almost two brings. And I will listen to all the crazy stories of the things you do, just as my mother listened to me. And while your mother goes and floats in a vat of chocolate sauce with a romance novel on a microchip, I will tell you all about a little girl named Tavy and the things she would say and do at 23 months:
She would sit and practice tantrums by happily chanting, "No, Mama! No Dada! No! No! No! Why? Where? What dat? Why? No! No! No DAT ONE! No! DIS ONE! NO!" Until one day, she said, "No MAMA!" and meant it. And then she would say no, even when she meant yes! Oh, how she loved to say no!
But she also loved to say EVERYTHING. She would repeat everything we said, even somethings we didn't want! She would even try hard things like "Rubber Baby Buggy Bumpers!" When we didn't understand something, she would say it over and over, louder and louder trying to help us speak Tavy-ese. She practiced sentences all day long and made us laugh and laugh.
Of course, sometimes she got really, really, really mad when we
couldn't understand her, and then she would kick, and scream, and cry,
and sometimes even bite her Mama. She could give the best hugs and kisses, and she always said, "I sorry! I sorry!" However, she wanted everyone to LISTEN to her
ALL THE TIME.
She also wanted to climb and run ALL THE TIME. One time she climbed up to the top shelf of her toy box and said, "Help, please!" We would take her to the park, and she would run and run and run. She ignored the equipment--she just wanted to run. She never looked back to see if we were following--she just wanted to be free.
So, we helped her out by taking down the baby gates at home, but it was TOO MUCH freedom, and she asked Mama to "shut de GEET!" She went up and down and up and down and up and down the stairs. She spun round and round and round and round in big circles, little circles, and figure eights. She made herself laugh and laugh.
She learned to unscrew caps and open jars. One night she managed to open a HUGE jar of pepper and sprinkled it in the kitchen saying, "Sand! Sand! Sand!" Then while her mama tried to clean it up, she stuck her fist in her mouth, but she had pepper on it! Ooooooooooh, how she cried (don't try that one!). That SAME NIGHT, she unscrewed the top to the vanilla bottle and poured it into ice cube trays while her mama made cookies amid slowly loosing her mind.
She liked to shut her little plastic ducks up inside the metal vegetable steamer while saying, "Open! Shut! Inside! Outside!" as she practiced for more evasive maneuvers. She learned how to use the potty quite well, but we had to stop her from trying to clean it! She took the toilet brush and tried to clean the whole bathroom, but knew enough to demand, "Mama WIPE! Mama WIPE UP!"
She started to learn her colors, and this could be funny. At first, she
thought everything was blue, and when corrected, she said, "DIS BLUE
SHIRT RED!" Then she learned black, and would only ride in Daddy's
black car and only wanted black shoes on her new doll. She loved to
color with markers, but her favorite canvas was her body. She loved to
tattoo herself, but she would also come up to her Mama and say, "I draw
Dada!" and they would draw a picture for her daddy. This was usually a
grand idea, but then there was the day that Mama allowed finger-painting
in her clean kitchen and somehow finger-paints ended up spilled
EVERYWHERE, but we don't speak of that evening except to say, "Well at least she brought Mama a wipe!"
She liked to pretend to be tiny baby and would crawl and say "WAH! WAH!" and ask for ba-ba or want to pretend to nurse. She liked to pretend to be Little Bear and would practice words that he uses like "Almost! Maybe! HONEY! HON-EEE! Huckleberry Pie!" She would ask for milk and HON-EE and laugh and laugh. One time, she pretended she was an apple and climbed into the produce box! She liked fruit so much, she wanted to eat ONLY fruit and would get so mad when there was no more!
She liked to fetch us our shoes, and she could even bring Daddy a shirt or socks from his bin. Sometimes she would bring us things we didn't quite want like trash or pieces of mail that she opened. But, when she had something naughty, she didn't want to be caught. She learned to ditch the contraband right before her Mama caught her and then run the other way, so that the Mama had to choose between scooping up the baby or going after the loot. Her favorite get away run was to Mama's bed, and she would jump and giggle. She taught herself to somersault on the bed!
She also taught herself to not sleep. She took longer and longer to fall asleep, and sometimes she wanted Mama to rock her in the rocking chair, while she rode in Mama's sling, just like Tiny Baby. Mama's heart melted when she started taking Mama's slings to ni-ni with her. But then, she started taking 30 minute naps. One week, 42 minutes was her record nap length. Her Mama was convinced this was an act of war, but really, it was just HER being HER.
Wonderful, amazing, frustrating, joyous, genius, headstrong, confident, clingy, needy, loud, loving, surprising, delightful, exhausting HER.
And I hope that YOU are just like her.
Love,
Me
