Two

Oh, my god. Two is killing me. The Bear was a perfectly reasonable and delightful two-year-old. Tank, on the other hand, is singlehandedly attempting to live up to every negative stereotype that's ever been made about two-year-olds.

She cries. Constantly. At the drop of a hat. She wants Mommy. No, she doesn't want Mommy, she wants Grandma. When she gets Grandma, she wants Mommy. I can deal with the changing-your-mind-every-two-seconds thing, but when the changes are expressed with screaming and crying and hyperventilating, my patience wears a little thin.

Then there's the defiance. The doing the exact opposite of what I ask. The "NO" to everything. The running away in public. The dashing out in the street. The wandering off in stores. The "NO" to everything. The refusal to eat.

She's like a ticking time bomb. I can never tell if she's going to be happy, or furious, or sad, or why. I know that's kind of the way of two-year-olds, but it's still so frustrating, and disconcerting, and irritated, and I just wish I could understand her better, or communicate with her better, or fix whatever the hell it is that's wrong with her. She's such an amazingly cute and charismatic kid - ridiculous curls, gigantic grin, the devil's own sense of humor - and I hate the fact that I don't always enjoy being with her when she's like this. I don't want to fast forward and miss these days, but at the same time, it's like the same bad day over and over again sometimes, and I don't really want to keep reliving it, either.

Yeah, well, she's asleep now, however fitfully, and there's some fantastic teenage vampire literature waiting for me in my own bed, so...