Kayleigh is 2. She hasn’t technically been a baby for a year. So this is probably the last “baby” zen I’ll post as it’s time to come up with a new name.
Month: July 2010
Two
About twelve hours ago my little baby girl officially turned 2 years old. A few hours before that she made her official declaration that the terrible twos had begun. Alright, it wasn’t an official declaration; after all this has been building for days. Somewhere along the line Kayleigh went from constantly asking for help when encountering obstacles to throwing minor (and occasionally major) fits whenever we even suggest she need our assistance. Today the issues just happened to be complicated by a lack of sleep.
Kayleigh does a much better job these days when it comes to the tricky subject of sleep (not counting naps). The incidents of middle of the night or, indeed, any pre-6:30 AM wakings have practically vanished. At most she may inconvenient us with an hour of bizarre monologues streaming across the monitor sometime in the vicinity of 1 or 2 in the morning. Fortunately these tend to lead to later wake times. But today she decided to combine all of the issues into one. To be fair, that might have had more to do with the contents of her diaper rather than a personal decision. Regardless, a 4 AM wake time is simply no good for us or the little one, even if she did continue to perform her 1 baby, off-Broadway improv show for 1 and a half hours before it was time for me to kick down the door.
Even with a 2 hour nap in the middle of the morning, the day was filled with little tantrums around every corner. And we’re not talking “whining because we won’t let her watch TV” tantrums. No, we’re talking full blown freakouts because I had the audacity to answer the phone rather than check to see if she wanted to first or some kid briefly touched a toy that she was no longer playing with. Navigating this behavior is normally pretty rough, but doing it on a day when most of The Woman’s family was around for her birthday exaggerated the issues even more. I rarely look as forward to bedtime as I did this evening.
But that’s enough complaining. Really, I love my little girl. But days like today push that all to the limits. Still, I can’t express how much my love has grown over these 2 years watching my little girl grow up right before my eyes. Thank you Kayleigh for another wonderful year of being my daughter.