2.5: An Open Letter

Dear Edith,

In the tradition of jcf, twinkle-bot, and some other wise mama friends, I'd like to mark a significant anniversary of your birth with a letter to you about what you're like today, at this age, and what you mean to us. Please keep in mind that the above friends write beautifully in this vein, while my forte seems to be collecting humorous anecdotes and noting the ironic. I hope you'll forgive me this blog when you're old enough to read it. And pardon this new venture in genre.

What is perhaps most striking is not how much you have changed in the last thirty months--because that is, of course, undeniable--but rather, how true you've stayed to the person who first impressed us. Your father discarded all our possible names for you as soon as you were born, because the person that emerged was so obviously a strong, confident, big personality that filled the room...not a demure, delicate little thing like your father realized he had been imagining a girl child. He felt you deserved a strong name to match the person he recognized in that moment. Today we still see that strong, confident, big personality filling the space wherever you are.

Incidentally, you were very interested to hear the story of your first few days of life as I recounted them to you this evening on our walk with Bismarck. You've been interested in stories about "when I was a teeny tiny baby" recently. You appreciate good dialogue and often during such tales will ask, "What I say to you?" In response to such an inquiry tonight I said that when you were born the first thing you said was "Waah! Waah! Waah!" because you missed being safe and warm inside your mama. That's still the way you start each day, crying "Mama!" I look forward to the day when you wake up without crying. Not to mention without nursing. The people who have told me that breastfeeding toddlers often lose interest in nursing at 2 1/2 never met you. Maybe things will change on the other side of 2 1/2, but I'm not holding my breath. You start begging for "mommy milk" as soon as dusk falls and can even worm your way to the source while I'm on the phone and momentarily distracted. In the last week you've been trying to add an extra 3am feeding back in, too--ugh. Since you've been expressing interest in having a baby sister or brother, such as a handful of your friends have recently acquired, I warned you tonight that if you ever had a baby sister or brother you'd have to share the mommy milk. You nodded as if to agree, but I'll hope that if that brother or sister ever arrives, it's a moot issue by that point. Meanwhile, you keep lifting my shirt and peering into my belly button, asking hopefully if there's a baby in there now. My currently gestating baby is in the computer file marked "DISSERTATION," which I suspect would be something of a disappointment to you as siblings go.

If I had written this letter to you yesterday during your Sunday afternoon nap, as I'd planned, it would have sounded a very different tone. Yesterday you were practicing all the finest two-year-old arts: negation, procrastination, irrationality, whining, dawdling, and tantruming. Yes, at 2 1/2 we've finally see a few out-and-out tantrums, of the kind from which you've thoughtfully abstained thus far. These are characterized by your yelling "no" to absolutely everything, even the very things for which you begged a second earlier, while screaming ever more angrily and backing away from any physical contact. Fortunately, this is still not standard fare for you and dissipates quickly.

Much more prominent recently has been your attempt to see how much of the world is yours to deny: a toddler Descartes in action. You've been trying your "no" statements on a whole range of new things. For example, we're playing, and Daddy announces supper is ready. You say you don't want to eat, and I say you may stay in your room and play, while I go have supper. (We are reserving our strength in the meal battles recently--supper is not your truth, so we've given up insisting that you sit down with us, for now.) But you not only want to continue playing--you want me to continue playing, too. So you announce, "No, Mommy, you're not going to eat supper." I reply calmly that yes, I am, I'm hungry. "No, Mommy, you're NOT hungry" comes back the determined reply. Sorry, kid, beyond your provenance.

Or I say it's time to walk Bismarck. "No, Bismarck not walking today. Today is not a walk day for him," you say, when you know perfectly well that Bismarck gets walked at least twice every day. It used to be that we could get you off the playground for a dog walk by explaining that you had had your turn, and now it was Bismarck's turn for something he liked, and then it would be your turn again. Now you simply say, "No, it's not Bismarck's turn. It's my turn." None of this works, mind you, as we supply those critical limits that experts tell us ultimately make you feel safe and, safe or no, that teach you to be a civilized human being. But good God, is it exhausting. Neither your dad nor I is much on conflict, and we're only a bit better with irrationality. You serve up both in heaping double portions.

Your patience with inanimate objects that are not behaving as you would like is, alas, minimal. Some of our friends have suggested wise ways of responding to your frustration before you go over the edge. Which we'd be glad to try, if you'd allow a few seconds between your first attempt to maneuver the thingy-ma-bob into the doo-hickey and your enraged screams. "NO, puzzle!" you yell, infuriated when the corner of a piece bends. "YOU DON'T DO THAT!" Your 0 to 60 would be the envy of any luxury car manufacturer.

So if I'd written this letter yesterday, 2 1/2 might have looked quite bleak. But the Hyde who skipped her Sunday nap, thus preventing the post, woke up as Jekyll this morning, bubbling over with all the rosy, wonderful things about 2 1/2 that make being your parents a joy and delight for us.

Your first comment, after you and I both sleepily surfaced from the early morning nursing session, was, "Mommy, you send a jacket with me to school today?" Last week Daddy sent you off without a jacket on a day that got colder than he'd expected during the afternoon, and your teachers made you wear a school jacket when you went out on the playground. You hated that. You're particular about irregularities these days: won't eat the browned part of the scrambled eggs, decline the red bib because we inadvertently burned a small hole in the shoulder when we put it in the lower rack of the dishwasher. So a school jacket that obviously wasn't your own was an uncomfortable proposition. What impressed me this morning was that in your first few seconds awake you observed that the room was cold, jumped mentally to the prospect of being cold at school, recalled the jacket incident a week ago, and proposed a way to forestall the same mishap today. Your memory is remarkable, and if you sometimes attempt blunt negations, you also are increasingly clever in your negotiations.

Indeed, you continue to be so attune to people. Since you and Daddy discovered a children's book yesterday in the church library about the leper who was healed by faith in Jesus, you have had us read it six or seven times. You are so excited when the poor man who has been living alone in a cave for years gets the chance to see Jesus. Your ability to read the emotional tone of a scene in a book or movie is almost uncanny sometimes. And speaking of uncanny, on Saturday you asked me to hold your hand while you walked along a wooden beam that you were pretending was a tightrope in the circus. As you walked you sang, "Better beware, be canny and careful -- baby, you're on the brink" and then stopped. Did you know how well your chosen lyric fit? I suspect that at some level, you did. Clambering up the stairs to our apartment you sang, "She waltzes on her way to mass and whistles on the stair." I always wanted to try to match clever literary references with Peter Wimsey...here you are, a two-year-old Dorothy Sayers.

Your imagination is richer by the day, though it gets stuck sometimes when you try to enact a scene. Your father has been "the Captain" and I, for reasons unknown, Marta, the second-youngest VonTrapp, on and off for a number of days now. You, of course, are Miss 'Ria. Though most of the time we can conduct our usual business while in character, you also ask us all to pile onto the bed because thunder is starting and you want to comfort us. You hug me and tell me the thunder is starting and you will take care of me, but when I ask you to sing to me about your favorite things, you frequently say no. You just remind us that the thunder is starting and we should all get on the bed. Over and over. Sometimes in much more ordinary conversations, you instruct us as to what we should say and how you will respond: "Mommy, you say, 'Where you get that picture?' and I say, 'I make it at school.'" Ready, action. A theater director in the making? Great-Grandma Mary would be proud.

Your love of books is a joy to us both. You are starting to enjoy even some books without pictures, like chapters in Winnie-the-Pooh--another sign of how rich your imagination is becoming. Last night for the first time you had me read the chapter in which Pooh and Piglet track an unknown animal. This morning at breakfast you mused, "Pooh and Piglet thought it was a Woozle. But it was actually just their own feet." You are fond of "actually." When I was reading you "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," which only refers to St. Nicholas and St. Nick, I explained that that was another name people used for the big man in red. "Some people say Nicholas," you confirmed. "But it's actually Santa Claus." "Mr. Scott calls me Sweet Pea. But actually, I'm Edith."

I seem to be writing about the funny things you say in spite of myself. But so much of what you say and do is not just funny but very dear to us. There is the simple way you tell your daddy "I love you" before going to bed every night. And when he says, "I love you, too," you repeat, "I love you, too." There is the thoughtful way you ask, "Mommy, how was your day?"...even if it's 10 am. There are the recent occasions when, having had the changing foliage pointed out to you a few times, you have exclaimed spontaneously, "Mommy, see that tree? Isn't it beautiful?!" There was yesterday when, on hearing me address a grace to God, you looked around asked, "Mommy, where's God?" And when I explained that God was everywhere but couldn't be seen, but that you could talk to him* whenever you wanted, you stated simply, "God, I'm putting money in my piggybank." (*Your daddy loves that in your standard table grace, God is "she.")

For all your growing and learning, there are the little things that remind us, in minor ways, that you're a baby yet. You still wear diapers, and though you can use the potty when prompted, seem to feel no need to do so on a regular basis. You still take naps for several hours each afternoon. I'll be sorry when that's no longer true. And despite the fact that you wake up from your slumbers crying, you show no interest in climbing out of your crib--nor can you quite climb into it without help, though you try. One of those Published Lists of Milestones by Age suggested that you would be a regular crib monkey by now. Also that you'd be taking off and putting on your own clothes and pedaling a tricycle. None of these tricks is in your repertoire, though you did show off your brand-new gallop today, proudly calling it skipping. If your belatedness in some physical skills comes from your mother, you show much greater equanimity about it than she ever did: "Mommy, I'm a big girl. But I can't push the pedals on a tricycle even though I'm a big girl. But maybe I will learn soon."

But even when you can pedal a tricycle, put on your own clothes, and keep your cool with the most obstinate puzzle piece, you'll always be our baby. We feel more blessed by the day in being your parents. We love you very much and are proud of who you are and who you're becoming. We are so deeply thankful for all that you've brought into our lives.

XOXO,
Mama