Out of breath, big and with heartburn
I am only five months pregnant, only five. I predict huge baby and extreme postpartum skin sag. I even had a few people ask me if it was "soon" yet. I can't wait for the "Only one, are you sure?" - comments. Nothing like being the big fat pregnant freakshow. On that note, I give you: The freakshow in autumn splendor.
Let's talk about the born child though, because she is still the dominating factor in my life. I have to say I love the twos although they indeed are terrible in many ways. Veronika can now truly express herself and it's wonderful. It's like having a real child, haha! No, really, the baby stage is cute and all but there is only so much babyness to take in after all the diapering and the feeding. The toddler stage, two and above, is something else. There is communication and it makes all the difference.
What hasn't changed really are my mixed feelings, the simultaneous delight and exasperation I take in watching her be alive. She loves playing in her own world and I love watching and listening. She will repeat phone conversations using the Pampered Chef cheese grater ("Hi Grandma! Hi Veronika, how you doing? Having fun? Playin with trucks? Ok, bye. See you soon.") or explain something to the Pooh stickers on the fridge (mumblemumble - Winnie! Piglet! Come on!!! Sorry Sorry! mumblemumble Pretty much. Pretty much.) She is so absorbed in her play she will pee her pants numerous times on the same day that she also uses the potty in a timely fashion. When Lincoln or I come home from work, she will tell us about all the main events of the day in this excited half-yelling voice (Papa! Noni potty number 2!!!)... it's to die for.
And then there is the toddler dark side. My daughter's slight OCD behavior has escalated. The book she left on the box has to be first page up, she will request to be lifted out of the crib so she can assure that. She needs to be carried up the stairs, no, she wants to do it herself! She needs to exit the car by herself, no not this door, the other door! Before sitting down in her carseat, she needs to name 23 objects surrounding her, each preceding with "Is this? (Window) Is this? (Jacket) etc." She needs to use this clip, NOT the other. "This one, mama!" "No, like THIS, mama!" "No, that one, THAT one!"
I feel my world is laid out with tiny traps, invisible, inside and outside my house. There is a silent network of rules and I am bound to break them and then I will see the world explode and crumble, several times a day in form of a two-year-old girl falling apart in tears and screams. It must be so tough being a toddler. The mood swings willl kill you. I'd venture to say menopause must be a walk in the park compared to it. What is worse for the people witnessing it, is that toddlers are excused from everything, whereas hormonal women are expected to control themselves. I want to throw a tantrum about having to deal with the emotional wreck of a two-year-old on a daily basis. Do you know what toll it takes on one's psyche? After you have closed the door THE WRONG WAY 3 times? Did you even know one could close the door the wrong way so many times? I live with her through her highs and lows, as she moves with ease from one to the other while I am continously reeling from the last meltdown, wondering why the heck the world is still standing and she is now... smiling!
I can handle it all more or less, since the coherent and happy moments are just as numerous as the despairing ones, but after a week or two with no real break, my fuses blow out one after the other and I am a step away from the perpetual abyss every second of the day. Veronika has been a good napper since about 10 months old but now she has discovered that you don't necessarily need to sleep when you are put in bed. So she won't nap and then take her mood swings up a notch for the rest of the day. To my joy.
Last week on one such day I let her get out of bed after not having taken a nap - which means I didn't "nap" either - and decided I wanted to finish that puzzle my sister and I had started while she was visiting. It is the stupidest idea one could have, but I was tired and overwhelmed and I wanted to do something fun dammit, something "I" like to do and not make playdoh dogs or print out maisy coloring pages. I pulled out the puzzle from underneath the bed (1000 pieces... crazy idea, I told you.) and immediately Veronika was there to "help": Mama, puzzle! Biiig puzzle! Is this? A horse? Is this? A tree! A tree, mama!" I tell her about 20 times NOT to touch anything, but who am I kidding. Veronika loves puzzles. Eventually she shows some understanding by repeating back to me: Mama's puzzle! Mama's own puzzle! Then she picks up random pieces and throws them to me: Here you go, mama. Here you go. Here, mama, here! Here you go! I tell her not to touch, completely mad from the uselessness of it all. Meanwhile Digby is intrigued and runs across the puzzle twice. "Here you go mama!" as she rips a few meticulously pieced strips apart, but with the most helpful voice you can imagine. Digby tries to grab one and chew it up. I want to cry. I know I am stupid for trying to do something both of them will surely not be able to ignore, but why, oh why. I just wanted this one little hour of fun...
I've been thinking how as we grow up and especially as adults we are always striving to be perfect, in the sense of reducing the number of mistakes we make and increasing efficiency as much as we can. It's valued in the work place, in relationships, in financial matters... the less mistakes you make, the better your life, the better you are, right? Then you have children and you realize that this approach is completely unproductive. I'm reading these books, which suggest parents need to see the world from the child's perspective to effectively parent them and lead them in the right direction. But in the case of a toddler, this means, you have to completely forget about efficiency and the focus on reducing mistakes. Instead you should consider it all a part of development and the focus should be on building a sane emotional life of your child in the face of all this learning she has to do. I am learning a new rating system and it's not easy, especially since I still have a whole range of tasks in my life that demand efficiency, partly in order to make my toddler's life possible. I am trying hard to be patient with Veronika. She deserves it and I hope I'm not failing her, but oh, it is wearing me down. She has that special ability to persistently and efficiently (!) drive me crazy. The force is with her, obviously.
Posted at 08:23 PM on November 14, 2005
Beautiful pictures! Veronika's really precious and the stories you tell make me laugh ... they remind me so of my own daughter. With her it wasn't quite as "bad" when she was 2 - she glossed over the Terrible Twos rather easily. When she turned three, though, things really started ;) It's getting better now that she's in kindergarten. It's also really cute to observe how they interact with their little baby brothers, you will see... - Isabella's amazingly tender and gentle, and the first thing when home is that she asks "Wo ist der Dominik?". It's great when they suddenly turn into Big sisters!