Terrible Two's

Wow--when I break out of a slump, I do it in style, huh? Sorry about my 1000-word treatise on how I made over a 20 square foot space in my home. It kind of felt nice to dive into that project and live through it happily. Some of my friends had cocked dubious eyebrows at my endeavor, even...

Now that Kaitlyn is two, Fran and I figured that we would start working on her baby book. Maybe it's a cop out, but two years gives you a little perspective on the child. It's always fun when people have kids that are like 3 months old and exclaim "Oh, they're so fun!"

What's so fun about a completely self-absorbed lump of flesh that wakes up crying every 2.5 hours to drink milk and shoot it out the other end?

If you asked me about my kids when they were 3 months, you would have gotten "Oh, he/she is so smart/fun!" Like I said: perspective.

After two years: They are so smart/fun...

I got this really cool camera nearly 2 years ago, so we have the most documented children on the face of the planet. Seriously, I took like 5000 (000) pictures last year--available in the DVD box set...

We have this problem--I tend to be the type A, overachiever, hurry-up-and-write-everything-in-the-baby-book kind of person, but Fran actually has the legible handwriting. Also, she is the one who documented every occurrance, such as--first tooth, first time to smile, first steps, etc. So it takes a little team effort. Plus, it would kind of be bad for me to do it all--Fran would feel negligent.

Tonight, I got all of the documents/photos/the 90% blank Baby book, and plopped them in Fran's lap and I bathed the kids and got them into bed to give her time and privacy to work on it. She's still sitting next to me writing furiously (yet still legibly somehow) in the book and asking me questions:

"What was the name of that bank where I worked?"

"Do you want to fill in this part about how you felt when you first held Kaitlyn? (No, not really--do I go for purely factual or overly sentimental? I feel like I'm being set up...)

So, now Kaitlyn is in the midst of the terrible two's. I may not be an expert on much, but I feel that I have studied and have some insight on this time: This is a period of some kind of exponential brain growth during which kids realize that actions they take have repercussions in "the real world". Kaitlyn will squeal with delight while knocking everything off our bathroom vanity and seeing us freak out. Or watch intently to see our reaction when she dumps a pitcher of iced tea. She also flexes her independence by going and pulling a bag of chips or cereal out of our pantry and ripping it/them open for a snack.

These are the kids that you see in the store/restaurant/whatever and think "I can't believe they brought their kids here! What a pain!"

A couple of weeks ago at a wedding, Kaitlyn thought it was really funny to squeal loudly as the bride walked down the aisle--Nothing I said or did could stop her, so I finally had to leave, missing the ceremony itself (seriously, I couldn't care less--I had never met the groom and had only met the bride, my wife's cousin, one or two times before).

The confusion and uncertainties of these times are so hard on little kids--I have a couple of pictures (told ya') taken less than 60 seconds apart--in one of them she is smiling broadly and in the other she looks like she is deathly fearful. Sometimes she starts walking toward another child saying "Hi, Baby!" and by the time she gets there she is interpreting her feelings as anger or jealously and she takes a swing at them. Sometimes I've seen her get emotional about something and then misinterpret her emotions to mean something else. Other frustration comes from having thoughts without the communication skills to express them.

As their physical skills, social skills, mental capacity, and boundaries mature, kids start to settle down and are more fit to be around. I think pretty much every one that reads my blog won't relate to this, so: sorry again!