Let it begin

Here we go. I am now officially the mommy of a toddler …. again. I have dreaded this moment and kept telling myself and others, “he’s still my little baby”, but that is all past now. I think I need to accept this and move forward. Ray is in the terrible twos. How do I know, you might ask? There are quite a few tell-tale signs:

1. He’s moody. That’s putting it lightly. Some people have bad days, but Ray has bad hours or minutes, which rapidly turn into hysterically happy ones with a crazy grin, giggles and him saying, “uh yights?” That is his word for everything these days “yights”. I don’t know what it means. I thought he was saying “lights” at first because he was noticing all the lights on the tree and outside, but now he’ll say it when he hears a train, opens a door, sees Noah … pretty much anytime.

2. He’s very needy. He gets this way everyday from about 3 pm until he goes to bed … sometimes earlier in the day, like 1 pm on, but at least by 3 pm it hits. And I always check to see if it’s something he actually needs – like a diaper change, or maybe he’s thirsty or hungry. nope. He just wants me to sit and hold him. It doesn’t suffice that I am within 12 inches of him, I must be doing nothing but holding him in my arms, so that I cannot do anything else.

3. If for some terrible reason I am not doing what he wants (which seems to happen quite a lot), he does what I have dubbed the “Velociraptor scream”. It’s a developmental milestone with my boys. They all did it and now so does Ray. They scream in a high pitched tone that cuts immediately to the inner ear. It’s very disturbing … to everyone within a 1000 ft radius.

4. He is not capable, anymore, of playing appropriately or with appropriate items. For instance, he has a small play kitchen in our actual kitchen. He never plays with it anymore. Instead of opening and closing the doors on his play kitchen where there are loads of fun and constantly rotating toddler toys inside, he walks right past his kitchen and opens up the cupboards directly in front of me, slamming the cupboard doors into my knees or sometimes his face, if I step back out of the way.

Inside of the play kitchen, there is a clear plastic tub. It is supposed to hold the plastic food for his play kitchen, but it never does. Ray takes it out of the play kitchen sometimes (and I usually gasp with excitement at the sight of him really playing with his toys) and he instantly dumps the plastic food out and crams himself inside the bin. Sometimes he crams himself inside the play kitchen cupboard too. It’s funny to watch, but this is all inappropriate play.

He has the most delightful nursery, filled, brimming even, with age appropriate and wonderful, colorful toys. He never goes in there. Instead, he is drawn to inappropriate objects like – pencils, pens and crayons, small legos to stuff in his mouth, the vacuum cleaner, and light switches. He is constantly crying, if not from a mood swing, then from hurting himself while playing inappropriately with inappropriate things.

5. He is mean. He hits me in the face when I ask for kisses and kicks me in the thighs when I change his diaper. He dumps every sippy cup of water out. But how could he dump a sippy cup of water out? Aren’t they spill proof? Welllllll, he takes them, turns them upside down, then bangs them repeatedly until water or milk comes out. He does this not only at the highchair, but whenever he has a sippy cup. Sometimes he will have a sippy cup in his carseat, where there is no surface to bang them on. That doesn’t stop him. No, he just bangs the upside down sippy cup on his legs until his pants and/or shirt are soaked. Then he cries.

6. He cries. All. the. time.

7. He throws everything. He’s broken so many things. oh so many things.

And so because we’ve reached this threshold of the terrible twos, I am nuts. I feel like I’m living in crazy town. I put something down, turn away, turn back and it’s gone. I feel like I must have misplaced it. But really, I just have a mean little midget drunkenly sauntering around behind and around me destroying everything I do! I have lost keys, shoes, cell phone …. and today in Target, that little, mean midget lost my dark blue scarf. I loved that scarf. I got it while on a trip with Daniel to Holland, MI – a non-kids trip. And it’s gone. I saw him trying to chuck it out of the cart several times and stopped him, but he got to me and did it while I wasn’t paying attention to him. Heaven forbid I ever actually look at the things I’m trying to buy instead of Ray. Mean midget. ahhhhhhh, well. I guess the terrible twos teach me and reteach me that material things are not important.

Well, it’s 5 pm now and we’re right in the middle of Ray’s bad mood part of the day (3-7:30pm) and he’s in full swing. Sometimes I give up and put him in his crib with his favorite blanket to stay away from me for a bit while I type furiously away on my blog about my dumb scarf. It doesn’t matter, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. The terrible twos are here. Wish us luck.