It's terrible

The little munchkin, chronologically speaking, is not yet two years old, but developmentally she is very much there. I now understand where certain authors, such as Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and whoever the screenwriter was who wrote The Exorcist, get their material -- they had two-year-olds. Oh, the drama.

My daughter is very articulate, with a large vocabulary and her own distinct grammatical style. She has taken to making frequent proclamations about what is and isn't allowed in the world. There are many rules, and "people" must follow them. For example, "No people take milk baby's." "No people take giraffe baby's." "No people sing song ABC." This last rule only applies in the car, where no people, other than the baby, are allowed to make noise. We are not supposed to sing or play the radio, although we are allowed to talk. Did I mention that my daughter's getting kind of bossy?

She's also decided that she wants to choose her own clothes. I'll let you decide about her fashion sense. Personally, I kind of like the hat. Those pink shoes very popular of late. They've replaced the previous favorite, which were the puppy shoes.

I really like the way she is striving to control her world, even if it does mean bossiness, tantrums, appropriated possession, and death-defying climbing stunts. She is confident and forward-looking and ready to conquer the world.

I'm a failure

I am a failure. Not in general, but at this parenting blog thing. I almost never seem to be able to update this blog. I let months and months go by without posting a thing.

Someday I will regret it. Someday, when I'm trying to remember exactly how old my daughter was when she stopped saying, "Oh, yes" and started instead saying "Yeah." Someday, when I'm trying to remember when it was she started understanding pronouns. ("Is this your book?" "My book." "Is this your hat?" "Mommy's hat.") Or when it was when she started calling me "Mommy" and Amy "Mama," instead of calling us (and pretty much everyone else) "Mamamamma" or "Dadadadadadada." I'll regret it when I try to remember -- When did she learn to shake her head for yes and no? How old was she when she first announced that she wanted to sit on the potty? When did she first insisting on eating with a spoon, and then with a fork? (She insists on them, but doesn't always use them.) At how many months did she start saying "danks" almost every time you gave her something? When exactly was it when she started pointing and almost everything and saying "dis" and "dat?" When did that change to just "dat" and when did the ubiquitous "dat" become rare, because she knew enough words to call almost everything by name? When did she first kiss me? When did she first hug me? When did she first go on the swings? Slide down the slide by herself?

Or maybe I won't regret it. Do I need to remember the exact day, or even the exact month, each of those things happened? Maybe I just need to remember the feeling, the experience, the timelessness of each of those moments. That's hard to forget.