You know that thing where you put your kid to bed one night, and then wake up the next morning to an almost completely new kid?

Yeah. THAT. Like, 7 days a week.

Dylan’s a year and a half old now, she’s not a baby anymore. *SOB* She’s a bonafide little girl, in more ways than not. Sure, she’s still in diapers (but not for much longer, fingers crossed, I’m beginning my potty training research soon), she’s still on the boob (even though the weaning is going well, I’ve eased up a bit, I’m just not ready to stop completely yet), and she babbles on nonsensically for hours everyday in her own little baby babble. But lately, in the middle of all that chatter, I’ll recognize a word, or two, or five. Words that I didn’t know she could say. Words that I didn’t even know she *knew*. She has opinions. Very, very strong opinions, on everything from food (I can get her to eat pretty much anything if I bribe her with blueberries first), to music (when we’re in the car, she tells us “NO” as we scan through the radio until we land on a song that is to her liking). She answers me when I ask her questions, she asks me questions or requests specific snacks and books and movies. It’s like having a conversation with a very little drunk person with attention deficit disorder.

In the car on the way home from the mother ship yesterday (read: Target), I sneezed. And from the back seat, in a her little squeaky toddler voice, Dylan said, “Bless mama”. And then I died.

I’m loving this stage of kid. I’m watching her brain grow, everyday, and that blows. my. mind. She’s counting, putting words into sentences (“I has snack?” and “I have poop!” are her most used right now), entertaining herself. It’s a fucking blast, man. I wake up every morning excited for what she’s going to wow me with that day. Which is a nice change from waking up every morning staring another day of exactly the same in the face. Toddlerdom is winning for me so far.

Please let my willful ignorance go on for a little longer. I’m more than aware that I’m roughly 6 months away from the terrible twos. Let me revel in my not-quite-terrible toddler for just a while longer. You can point and laugh soon enough, don’t worry.

Dylan got Jello for the first time today. And I bought stock in Shout! Stain Remover.

Her spoon accuracy is hovering around 40%, and Jello is way too slippery to eat with a spoon anyway, so we call it a finger food ’round these parts.

She was a little annoyed with me that I kept pestering her with photo requests, what with the bowl of pure sugar sitting in front of her. She humored me, but just barely.

“Mo mama? Mama? Mo? Mama mo peeze? PEEZE MAMA MO?”

This onesie just became play clothes.

This all happened this afternoon at around 3:30. Since then, she’s asked me for ‘lo ELEVENTY BILLION TIMES. Apparently, there *is* always room for Jello.

I hear the unmistakable “thump” of girl hitting floor, and then a split second later, the wail. I dry my hands and hurry to her, ready to snuggle and soothe and kiss her bumps to make it all better, the magical healing power of mommy. She sits, waiting, her beautiful brown eyes pooled with tears and expectation and just a glimmer of mischief. The thump wasn’t so bad, the bump, imaginary. She does this sometimes, tests me, to see how fast I will come, how many kisses I will give, how long I will rub her back to quiet her hiccuping sobs. When it’s a real thump, she comes looking for me.

Sitting on the floor, rubbing the barely bump, I think about how easy it is now, to make her feel better. A few tears shed, a bruise, the occasional busted lip from her feet not being able to keep up with her heart. Even when we scold her, and the corners of her mouth turn down and her bottom lip starts to quiver, all it takes is a hug, some kisses, reassurances that we love her, love her, love her, and all is forgotten. Truthfully, this is one of my favorite things about being a mom: the ability to make her feel better, to take away her pain, to make her feel safe. To turn her pain into laughter. Mommy magic.

I don’t want to think ahead to when my magic no longer works. I don’t want to know that one day, my baby will hurt and be sad and feel pain that I cannot take away. I don’t want to accept that one day, she won’t be my baby. At some point, it will take more than a tickle and kiss to make the tears stop. I dread that day.

So, until then, I will kiss every bump. I will hurry to her when she cries, rub her back, wipe away her tears, and I will ignore the smile that plays on her lips when she calls for me. When she calls out for mommy to come and give her some magic, even when she doesn’t need it. I’m hoping, in the way that moms do when we know better but don’t want to know better, that all the times I kiss imaginary ouchies and put band aids on invisible boo boos will add to some kind of magic bank. And when the time comes that I’m not able to make her hurt go away, she can dip into it, and use it to soothe herself, to dry her own tears and heal her own pain. And one day, she’ll use some of that magic on her own baby. Until she figures out how to make her own. I hope.

linking up with Heather of the EO and Just Write

Dylan is 17 months old (OH MY GOD), and still on the boob. Not a lot, just at night and before nap time, but enough that it’s still a pretty big part of our life. She’s never gone to sleep without “milkies” beforehand, and when she wakes up at night (normally 1-2 times, but sometimes more. MUCH MORE.), she doesn’t go back down without a little of the magic juice. Which, you know, isn’t terrible, by any means. But that means that no one, not even dad, has ever put her to bed or down for a nap but me. It also means that no one, not even dad, has been getting up anywhere from one to four times a night for a year and half with her, but me. And before you ask, she won’t take a bottle, never has (I would like to thank my breast feeding “support” group for that one, since they told me that if I gave her anything but the breast for the first 6 weeks, she would reject my boob and I would fail as a mother, so I was terrified to give her a bottle, and never did), and I stopped pumping a long time ago. I had a freezer full of milk that my nipple snob of a daughter wouldn’t drink from a bottle, so pumping just seemed…dumb.

So she’s been on the boobs for her entire little life. And I LOVE that I’ve been able to nurse her for so long, and I don’t want to stop completely. But you guys? I am tired. Like, really, really tired. The good nights are awesome, if it was all good nights, I’d nurse her into preschool. But lately, it’s been a lot of bad nights. She’s getting older, more aware, SMARTER than shit, so she’s starting to realize that bedtime? Sucks. And for the last 3 weeks or so, she wants no part of it. We have a routine, we put on jammies, listen to some music, snuggle with dad for a while, then me and the girl go to her room, she gets the milkies in her rocking chair, I give her tons of lovin’, put her in her crib, and voila! Out like a light. Except for the last 3 weeks, she hasn’t been out like a light, so much as she’s been up as soon as I’m out the door, throwing her pacifier and asking for milkies. So, I’ve been going in, giving her more of the good stuff, laying her down, at which point she jumps up and does the same thing all over again. This can go on for up to an HOUR some nights. An hour of mini nursing sessions, until she’s decided she’s done, and then she just lays down and fucking knocks out. It’s so annoying. And exhausting. And frustrating. Not only does she do this at bedtime, but she’ll also do it when she wakes up at 2 or 4 or 5 in the morning. I have considerably less patience at 5 in the morning, and it’s those times that have me leaning towards weaning (heh, did you see what I did there? I’m so clever, even when I’m exhausted).

I gave it a try last night, and had mixed results. She went down great, one nursing session, and I only had to go in once to soothe her (no boob). But then she woke up at 1 in the morning, and no
amount of mama cuddles would do. She wanted the boob. And she wanted it BAD. So bad, in fact, that after going into her room 5 times to soothe her and snuggle her and rock her and give her the paci she hurled across the room, I was at the end of my rope, and caved. I gave her the boob. I DIDN’T EVEN MAKE IT ONE NIGHT YOU GUYS. My first night of weaning was an epic, sucky fail. In my defense, I limited her boob time to one minute, just enough to calm her down and weigh down the eyelids. But still. After almost an hour of crying and screaming and me withholding the magic milk, I caved. And she totally knows it. She’s no dummy. She knows that I’m weak, and she will ultimately prevail. The balance of power (if there ever was one) has shifted greatly.

Tonight is going better, but it is young. I know that it’s going to be hard, and it’s only been two nights so far, so I’m not completely discouraged. And I don’t want to give up nursing all the way; I would still love to nurse before bed and before nap time, because I love those moments with her. I’m not even expecting to cut out all nighttime nursing-I realize that she’s still young enough to cycle out of sleep and need some help getting back down. But right now, she knows that every time she wakes up, she gets the boobs, and she’s holding that over my head like a sword. So we just need to start cutting back, slowly, and get to a point where she knows when she gets it, and when she doesn’t. Daytime weaning was easy for us, and I guess I figured (stupidly) that nighttime weaning would be just as simple. Once again, I was wrong.

For once, I would like to not be wrong. Wrong sucks, and always seems to result in less sleep for mama.

There is no progress report. No test or score or grade. Everyday, I fumble and guess my way through, hoping that the choices and decisions and moves I make are the right ones. The good ones. The best ones I can muster. And every night, as I lay in bed releasing the breath I’ve been holding since morning, I pray that today, I was enough.

How can I measure myself as her mother? She speaks, her own language, the beautiful babbled nonsense of the toddling, but her words don’t quiet the voice. The whisper, ever so slight, ever present, doubting. Will the voice ever stop? The first month, it was deafening, buzzing, maddening. With each passing month, my growing confidence drowned out the voice. I stopped worrying about right, and focused on best. For her. And we did it, he and her and I.

I’ve made a list, of the ways I measure myself. She laughs, freely and with pure abandon, more than she cries; she smiles, her lovely face-covering smile, even in her sleep; she asks for hugs and to hold my hand, even if we’re just sitting on the floor reading a book; when I hold her close, she whispers in my ear, “mama, mama”, her breath sweet on my cheek. When I find myself listening too closely to the voice, I look at her, and her eyes tell me all I need to know. Her hands, holding tightly to mine, her laugh ringing through the house, her beautiful babbling nonsense: she tells me all I need to know.

I am her mother. I am imperfect, but this she does not know. I am scared, but she can’t see it. She can’t hear the voice. She can only hear me. And that is enough. I am enough.

Of this, I am confident.

-linking up with Heather of the EO and Just Write

We were Two once, what seems like so long ago. Watching you over the table during dinner tonight, talking to our Three, I remember being Two. Two was simple. Two was exciting, in a way that Three is not. Three is better, but Two was…I miss Two sometimes.

I forget sometimes that we became Three by being Two, enjoying our Twoness. Do all parents stop being a couple for a time? When does the balance come back? It’s comfortable, all the time, too much of the time. When you know what the other is thinking, you stop asking. It seems like our best is spent when she drifts off to sleep, so there is nothing to give to each other. Fumes. How long can we cruise on fumes?

I still get flutters, when I look at you, catch you looking at me. I picked right. You picked right. But sometimes I need to remember that. And it’s hard. She is all, everything, us. What are we, anymore, without her? Strangers, at times. The most familiar, comfortable, intimate strangers. I miss you, in the same house. In the same room. In the same bed. I miss you. I miss Two.

But a touch. A look. A smile exchanged over sweet baby bed head. We remember, you and I. We could never forget, really. We were Two, once. And still are. And will always be. Three is better, Three is her, but Two is us. You and me. Three is perfect, but we need the Two. Especially if we ever want to be Four.

linking up with Heather of the EO and Just Write