Trying Times: The Terrible Twos (or, TTTTT)

Evelyn's almost two, and it seems like she's hitting all of her developmental milestones exactly on time. She's been working on her 2nd year molars all month, and I wouldn't be surprised if I finally feel that one tooth breaking through the gums tomorrow. (Yay -- no more teething after this round, I can't believe it!). She has truly hit her terrible twos, it seems right before we left on vacation. We'd been thinking all along that the "Terrible Twos" is a misnomer because she'd been defiant and stubborn and challenging for a while now, but now she's really kicked it up to the next level and I understand what the TTs is all about. She must do everything herself, in the way she wants to do it, right away, or there'd be repercussions. Serious repercussions. It's all about "E'elyn" now (how she says her name... kind of like "Ellen" but there's a silent V in there), as in "E'elyn do it!" "E'elyn have it! (Or "No have it!") "E'elyn try it!" "Mama, get it!" "E'elyn eat!! EAT!!" and so on.

It must be tough being a two-year old. There's so much more she can do now, like going up and down stairs practically unattended, feeding herself with a fork or spoon, running, jumping (off other things with actual height, which can be so nerve-wracking), doing somersaults, knowing a lot more about what she wants and doesn't want (she insisted tonight on having a hot dog for dinner. OK, just this once, but ONLY because we are on vacation, you got it?!). She's singing parts/most of a bunch of songs, like Itsy Bitsy Spider, The Wheels on the Bus, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, The Alphabet Song, My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, and even the first line to Dream a Little Dream, a song that I'll often sing to her. And of course, the Happy Birthday song.

And she can communicate!! I've tried so hard to pay attention and capture how it is exactly that she's learning to talk, but it happens so quickly it's hard to remember what it was like just a couple of days ago. I remember first marveling at the fact that she was getting gerunds, not just simple verbs or nouns (for example, a couple of months ago, she spied me lying on the couch with my eyes closed, resting after a probably tiring day at work, and she whispered to Papa, "Mama sleeping"). Her vocabulary gets bigger every day, and she can name so many of the everyday objects around her (couch, TV, chair, table, dinner, water, oatmeal, egg, bread, airplane, bird, and on and on) and concepts (outside, sad, mad, surprised, hurt). But it really blows me away when she puts everything together into somewhat coherent sentences. Again I think back to a couple of months ago, when I took Evelyn to our bed for a Saturday morning sleep-in. After a little while, she popped up and saw her Baby lying in the hall, and said "Mama, get it. Baby. Get it." I could not believe my ears. And now she barks off commands like that all the time. Like, "Mama, sit up!" or simply "Mama, up! Mama, up!!" while bringing me my slippers (again, while I'm stalling for time in bed in the mornings). She repeats quite a lot, and says things like "I got it" or "Up we go" in the same sing-songy way I say it. She can repeat some pretty complicated sounding words (e.g. "satellite dish"). She is a little person!!

But there's still so much that she can't do (either very well or safely) and she just does not understand that she can't. And it is exactly this intersection of her assertion of independence and her still-heavy reliance on others where we find ourselves: this is the terrible twos. The more she thinks she can do something herself, the more it is sometimes necessary to step in and either help or stop her, and doing either just really ticks her off. She is impervious to reason and yet we still need to reason with her and explain why we do things and how things work and give her labels for her feelings (I can't count how many times I say "I know it's frustrating that you can't do X....) and alternatives for her to take. Parenting a two-year old is so much easier, and yet so much harder!

Which leads me to the last of my reasons for being happy to be on vacation in Massachusetts:

5) Evelyn's in a challenging time of her life right now, navigating her new abilities and many limitations, and I'm so grateful that the timing worked out perfectly that she is going through this now, while we're on vacation and I can be with her every day, all day, to help her understand her tough emotions and guide her while letting her figure things out for herself. It's really hard to know when to step in and when to back off, but I do know that Evelyn really needs me, needs us, to be around, especially now. I know it's not going to end when our vacation ends, and it kills me to think of us going back to work full time after this. My mom loves Evelyn and does her best with her, but she's of the old school, and is a Chinese Grandma through and through, and I don't think is able to understand the nuances of the parenting that we're trying to do with Evelyn. (Heck, do WE even know?! We're figuring this out as we go along. Our guiding principal is to do better than just "the best we can" -- a totally attainable goal right?)

When we get home, we need to seriously start making changes to our schedules. It's unacceptable how little we see Evelyn during the day - about an hour to 1.5 hours in the morning at most, then about the same in the evenings in our mad rush to get home, play quickly, and give Evelyn her dinner, bath, book, nursing, and bed. Then we have all sorts of time in the evening to veg out in front of the TV (or work, as has been the case lately). And yet both of our jobs are as flexible as you can hope for. We stick with our 9-5 schedules like we have no choice, but we haven't even tried to do anything creative in order to get more time in with Evelyn during the day. So we've been talking and will be talking and thinking some more, to come up with some creative ways to make to make it work. Maybe John will do four 10-hour days and take one day off. Maybe I can work a couple of extra long, 12-hour days and do half days the rest of the week. It sounds a little daunting, but the idea of this time of Evelyn's life passing so quickly will push us to try. Before we know it, she'll be starting preschool, then elementary school... these unstructured days, full of possibilities and ideas that I haven't been able to executive with Evelyn, are literally numbered. What are we waiting for?