Stick it to Me

The toddler stage is not for the faint of heart

Ah, becoming a parent. Everywhere you turn, one can find a descriptive variety of poems, stories, and illustrations that depict the magical beauty of bringing a precious little being into the world. Life morphs before our eyes. We sit bewildered, in our postpartum grannie panties, staring at those slate-blue eyes of newborn-ness, wondering how we could ever have made something so insanely perfect as we gush over their little faces and send the portrait mode photos to literally anyone we know who has a rep for responding with heart eye emoticons.

Then, they turn one.

And it’s like you come home from the grocery store to the Tasmanian devil himself, squatting, uninvited, on your property.

The very reliable, never disappointing, Wikipedia website describes the Tasmanian devil as follows:

“Taz is generally portrayed as a ferocious, albeit dim-witted, carnivore with a notoriously short temper and little patience. He got his name in the short Ducking the Devil, where he is described as a ‘vicious, evil-tempered brute with jaws like a steel trap.’ Though he can be very devious, he is also sweet at times. His enormous appetite seems to know no bounds, as he will eat anything in his path. He is best known for his speech consisting mostly of grunts, growls, and rasps (in his earlier appearances, he does speak English with primitive grammar) as well as his ability to spin like a vortex and bite through nearly anything.”

If this doesn’t describe every adorable, irrational, irresistible, drive-you-to-therapy toddler we’ve ever met, then no, we’ve never pretended to sleep through their screaming.

Let’s pivot to specific examples that have occurred in the past couple of weeks, shall we?

Recently, while attending a sun-shiny Tee-ball game, Kara’s two-year-old insisted he apply to his face a deodorant bar style sunscreen, and an extremely generous amount of it, to boot. After painting only one half of his face a ghostly solid white, he finally relinquished the bar to his mom. As she turned around to place it back in the overloaded diaper bag, he smashed his face directly into the buttock region of her dark maroon leggings with the full force of his body. It left a lovely (half) toddler mug stamp in the center of her rear for the rest of her Saturday daytime activities.

Bethany’s (nearly) two-year-old is doing the two-year-old thing, as well. Every morning at drop off, she insists on analyzing the full wall mural of aquatic animals. One must ask her, “Where is the crab?” Then, “Show me the turtle!” If you forget to ask about the dolphins, you might as well kick yourself in the lady parts because you’ve just added ten dramatic minutes to the hallway warm up routine.

When Kara returns home from work, her two-year-old always greets her in the cul-de-sac and then gets to “drive” the car into the driveway. It’s a tradition. One particular day, he didn’t want to do it for the first time. Kara was a little heartbroken. Her husband Tyler sensed it, so he sort of made the toddler do it. As Tyler put the kid in the car through the window, Kara noticed the cutest little carpenter’s crack peeking out from his diaper (for those inquiring minds, yes, potty training efforts have been aborted). He plopped down on her lap to begin the driving. All of a sudden, she felt this odd, steamy heat on her abdomen. Since she had just run a 5k in 85 degree heat, she told herself it was from the pressure of him being on her lap. When they parked, he got up, and poop had seeped out the top of his carpenter’s crack all the way through her shorts. Good times. In retrospect, she wished she had just let him be done with driving season.

On Mother’s Day, Bethany went with the kids to the pool (no, she didn’t “Drop the kids off at the pool” for those of you with sophomoric humor.. she went with the kids to the pool). She put a swim diaper on the youngest. The child basically ignored her the entire time, happily splashing about in the wading area of the water, not that anyone here is complaining. When the child finally did come over, she positioned her forearms on her mother’s lap and had a warm, relieving pee on Bethany’s foot. (Kara miraculously captured this event for her sister on a live photo to be remembered for eternity.) Feeling refreshed, the toddler then grabbed the snack basket from the side table, took a fry, and took off.

Despite our being victims of these Tasmanian-style acts on the daily, here’s the thing.

We love this phase.

Like Taz, these little creatures are starting to speak some real English (albeit with primitive grammar). They begin putting words and phrases together and tell you about the “big, BIG trucks!” Before you know it, they are “big, bucket trucks!” And the next week, it’s “big, blue, bucket trucks!” You see an amazing progression happening so quickly and suddenly. You hear their vocabulary blossoming. You can’t help but smile with each new word, but before you know it, the words come too quickly to keep track.

Their little personalities are also forming right before our eyes. Kara’s son loves to put on a show. Anything for a laugh. He famously sings, “basketball jones….” (derived from the Cheech & Chong classic song) but when that isn’t doing it any more, pivots to “football jones….” He’s ornery and antagonistic with his big sister one minute, but sweet and kind to her the next. He asks often about all of his extended family members: “Where grandpa go?” He adores his dad, but mainly from the viewpoint of his mama’s lap.

Bethany’s daughter has entered the endearing phase of wanting to “help” with everything she is doing. She insists on climbing up to the counter at prep time to help cook and help quality control tasting of the cheese shreds. After they eat, she pulls a chair over to the sink to begin the tedious process of “doing dishes,”a/k/a filling small water bowls up and accidentally elbowing them onto the tile floor with an “ut-oh!” They go through a dish towel a night with this activity, but Bethany feels she is giving her daughter a Montessori school experience with the independent motor skill practice.

These creatures still have little snippets of babyhood peeking through every now and then, too. Like when Kara’s son puts his pointer finger in his mouth, digs the other hand in between himself and his mama, and snuggles his head deeply in her chest, or when Bethany’s daughter grabs her binky, dubbed “MINE,” and snuggles her head against her daddy on the way to bedtime.

Our little Tazs are fascinated by the most random things, which in turn fascinates us.  As Anne Lamott says, they “teach you to pay attention.” They help us to slow down. They see the flowers. They hear the trains. They feel things deeply. They remind us to acknowledge emotions. They excitedly babble about subjects only understood between them and God. They are in this metamorphosis space of not quite a baby, not yet a child.

So yes, they’re nuts. Like certifiable at times. But for every “stick it to you” moment, there’s another filled with sweetness and joy. We might be aching that they’re no longer babies at the exact moment they waddle on up for a snuggle session. When we are at the brink of losing patience with them, they prance out to the living room with underwear on their head. As we wonder if they will ever feel empathy for others, they grab our face after a hard day and give us the sweetest little open-mouthed “MWAH” kiss.

They’re sacred and silly, all meshed into one. Our crazy ass, Tasmanian-esk toddler daughter and son.