Not Quite Two

Dealing with a toddler ain’t easy. Of course we have all heard about the terrible twos but living through them is an entirely different story. There are times when I have to repeat the Serenity Prayer to myself on numerous occasions because despite how hard I try, the will of my toddler is clearly stronger than mine.

Take for instance last night at dinner time (hell, take any evening at dinner time), my usually angelic son throws everything not tied down to his tray on the floor. And I am not exaggerating when I say not 5 seconds before I told him not to. But with his toddler bravado he decided to go "bombs away" anyhow.

To add insult to injury, when I tried to reprimand him he hit me. Yes, you read that correctly, he hit me. We’ve had numerous conversations about how it is “not nice” to hit mommy. So, it was straight to timeout for him – as I silently asked God for the patience of Job to deal with this spawn of Satan that clearly is not my child.

As he pondered his misdoings, I cleaned up the aftermath of his throwing fest. I inadvertently left him for longer than a minute and the sounds of him playing reminded me that I needed to check in (I know, bad mommy). When I arrived he was holding one of my boots (we check our shoes at the door in my household) and with a broad smile yelled “HI! Boot mommy” this was quickly followed by “Sorry Mommy” and all was right again in my world. I mean really, who could resist?

Apparently this is my little angel after all.

(Someone please tell me that the angelic moments will outnumber the defiant ones. Somebody? Anybody?)