Dear Ladybug,
Last week you turned thirty-three months old. Usually I try to time these a day or so after your birthday, but seeing as how so much of this month has been dedicated to some holiday, be it Thanksgiving or Christmas, it just seemed appropriate to delay it till today. So Merry Christmas and a Happy Belated Monthly Birthday!
Let’s face it — this month has been all about Christmas. You already know the basic premise of Christmas… well, at least the part that counts: toys. You know that Santa is the guy who brings you gifts, and he’s you best shot for that official Disney Princess carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle. Hence, whereas last year it took a month of training to get you to even talk to Santa, this year you actively sought him out wherever we went, be it the mall…
… or Storybook Island …
… or even on the web …
… to request Disney Princess everything. Did it pay off?
You be the judge.
Still, this has been a busy and exciting month even without all the holiday stuff, most notably because you’ve opted to bypass the entire “Terrible Twos” for bona fide Teenager-dom. I’m not altogether sure that’s an improvement.
For example, you look like a teenager anymore: tall, lanky, and dressed like living Bratz doll. Of course, these two things are not entirely unrelated. Your physique is the consequence of an incredible growth spurt you’re going through. You weigh as much as you ever did, but you keep getting longer and longer, like the post-taffy-puller version of Mike Teavee. As a result of this, all of your clothes is suddenly two sizes too small, which means that you now have a wardrobe consisting of nothing but Capri pants and navel-exposing baby tees, which while making you appear extraordinarily fashion-forward (or at the very least, extremely likely to be cast in an Old Navy commercial) is of little practical use in the sub-zero arctic climate you find yourself in.
A second consequence of your ever-increasing stature has been your promotion from the high chair to the table. Originally, your mother and your Nana B invited you to the dinner table to share a special family Thanksgiving dinner, but you seized on the event as the final defining aspect of your “Big Girl”-ness, and it’s been impossible to get you back into your high chair since then. This has been something of a blessing in disguise, however, since it’s provided useful parental leverage in the event of a negotiation, for whereas you’ve correctly realized that my occasional threat to convert your big-girl bed back into a crib as a form of childish punishment is completely unrealistic, banishing you to your baby chair with a bib is altogether more likely and, apparently, infinitely more embarrassing.
You also act like a teenager anymore. For example, you’ve finally learned to carry on a conversation on the phone beyond the cursory “Hello… How are you doing?… Good…” portion. Now I frequently find you lying on the couch, feet up on the arms, hair dangling down to the floor, yapping away into my cell phone to one of your nanas, whose cell phone numbers can be so conveniently accessed at the push of a button.
Your attention span has also increased to the point at which you can sit down and watch the television for more than a few picoseconds, and in short order you’ve developed at taste for watching late-night movies with popcorn. Hence, you now demand to be taking to the movie store to get your DVD for the week — an activity in which you spend a half hour comically pouring over the relative strengths and weaknesses of the latest Barney movie — and over the course of the month we’ve stayed up late each weekend watching Cinderella, Tinker Bell, Happy Feet, Kung Fu Panda, and Madagascar. You’re more of a regular at the video store than I am anymore.
Unfortunately, you also act like a teenage in all the worst ways too, and this is no more apparent than in your current stubborn sense of independence. Your sense of independence is nothing new: I’ve already noted in previous newsletters that you’ve been taking on more and more activities yourself; indeed, you would indicate your desire to do such things with the charming “I can dood it!”. Instead, what’s changed is your new found pig-headedness in demanding it: “I can do it all by myself!” You need to pour a glass of milk. I can do it all by myself! You need to get on your footie pajamas? I can do it all by myself! You need to reconfigure daddy’s hard drive? I can do it all my myself!
This frequently results in you butting heads with your mother over doing simple — but potentially messy — things: you will demand to do it yourself on the grounds that you are physically capable of, say, pouring a glass of cranberry juice; whereas your mother will demand to do it herself on the grounds that you are infinitely likely more likely to inadvertently dye the entire counter-top bright red in the process. Unfortunately, your mother is at least as stubborn as you are, but she’s also older and stronger, and the inevitable endgame of these diminutive grudge matches is that you spend time in Time Out while your mother hunkers down with a hard lemonade and a brochure for military school.
Unfortunately, I think that I’m somewhat to blame for this. See, one of the books in your library is Mercer Mayer’s I Was So Mad, one of his’ delightful “Little Critter” series of books. You like reading that book a lot, especially grumbling “I was so mad!” at all the right bits, that one a whim I decided to get you another one of the series: All By Myself. I thought it’d be a cute celebration of your new skills; I had no idea you were going to latch onto it as a mini-feminist manifesto, like a Feminine Mystique for toddlers.
A related corollary to your determination to do things yourself is your determination to assist others, regardless of their need of (or indeed desire for) assistance, a scenario best summed up in your own words: “I want to help you anyways.” I cannot, say, fold a load of laundry or brush my teeth or take a bag of garbage out to the bin without finding you underfoot, tugging and pulling things your way, grunting “I want to help you anyways.” I’ve ending up doing all my tasks in pairs, combining something simple with something necessary — such as washing a load of laundry with, say, carrying this soup spoon upstairs — so that I might have some chore with which to distract you, sort of like a juicy steak I can throw off to the side to distract the junkyard dog that is you.
Thankfully, however, you have not yet reached that stage during which you are mortally humiliated by everything your parents do… in fact, you are more my little buddy now than ever before. Not only do we watch movies on the weekends, but you’ve also discovered that my office at school is filled with toys, and so each day after daycare we head back to my office to play with Play-Doh and magnets and draw pictures with chalk and crayons. You’ve even discovered my stash of plug-n-play video game emulators, and so at home we often play several rounds of Pac-Man or Pole Position. You’re absolutely terrible at them, but you still seem to have fun playing them, which can only mean demands for an godly priced Xbox or a PSP or a Wiitever can’t be too far behind.
Nighttime is particularly fun, since we’ve managed to cobble together an excessively silly method of going to bed. It begins with a story or two that I read to you, and ever more frequently with a story that you read to me. Phase II is the “lay flat” game, which might be best described as a human version of pushing down a wallpaper bubble: you stick up a leg or a knee or an arm or your head and I try with theatrical futility to push whatever appendage is extended back down again. Of course, whenever I push some limb down, another pops up someplace else. This goes on for several minutes until I finally have an arm across your legs, another across your torso and arms, and my forehead pressed against yours, preventing you from doing anything but giggling maniacally. Phase III involves putting on your blankets, which at last count numbered fourteen thousand. Phase IV involves singing songs. Phase V involves saying as many forms of “good night” and “sleep tight” and “I love you” and “see you later” that you can think of. And finally, Phase VI involves a healthy dose of chloroform.
You’ve also decided this month to become my personal daily wake-up call. For two months you’ve been using your “big girl bed,” and while you’ve gotten into it yourself every night, it has somehow never quite occurred to you that you could similarly leave it under you own power. Well, until this month. Now whenever you get up, you make a bee-line for my side of the big bed and begin poking at my face until I wake up enough to get you a warm glass of milk. One morning as I sat bleary-eyed with you on the couch, I asked “Do you want to wake up mommy next time?” to which you simply shrugged and said “No. I think I’ll just wake up you.” I’ve been trying to figure out what I’ve done to deserve this, and I can only assume its some form of karmic retribution for continuously forcing you to go to sleep before you’re tired.
But I wouldn’t change it for anything, little girl. I know I say it every month, but you keep growing and maturing into such a funny, smart, sweet young lady. And whether it be the Terrible Twos or the Terrible Teens, I sure love being your daddy.
— Ba ba
Photo album
See more pictures from your thirty-third month over at Flickr.
