Woway. WOWAY!

The title of this post is my attempt to replicate my daughter’s newly burgeoning sense of independence and bossiness. She has recently learned how to tell people (usually her big brother, but pretty often her mother or myself) to “go away” and if you do not do so immediately she will repeat herself, forcefully, until you comply.

It’s ridiculously cute, of course, because she’s a year and a half old and yet fully expects to be heeded. And it’s also, I admit, on some level reassuring. We are not raising some shrinking violet here. The little girl has backbone, and that can only be a good thing. The other day she came home from daycare with a garish bitemark on one arm. At this point, the second time through having a toddler in daycare, my wife and I did not freak out (these things happen) and the full extent of our dwelling on the topic consisted of my wife asking “Well did she punch the kid who bit her?” and me shrugging “I don’t know. I assume so,” and my wife agreeing, and then we finished unloading the dishwasher. Not that I condone violence (retaliatory or otherwise) but with nineteen-to-twenty-four-month-olds it doesn’t exactly qualify as violence; it’s just a pre-verbal, overly physical way of dealing with the world at large. Something to be outgrown (we hope).

I feel like the little girl is underserved in these blog posts sometimes, because her brother speaks in complete sentences and has his own interests and perspectives which he expresses in them, while she still hews pretty close to your indistinguishable textbook toddler behavior. (OK and now I have to share that the other day I was tickling the little guy and, in his efforts to get me to stop, he resorted to yelling “I’m not laughing! I’m not laughing!” despite the fact that he totally was laughing his head off. I relented, since I’m not out to traumatize the poor kid, but afterwards I was thinking about it and realized he wasn’t just being contrary, as is his default mode some days, but he was trying to make a fairly sophisticated distinction which was slightly beyond his ability to articulate. He was trying to differentiate between the involuntary laughter that the tickling produced and his conscious desire not to be tickled, even as he was betrayed by his own reflexes. That’s kind of cool.)

But I do sense that the little girl is on the cusp, of talking (obviously) and also expressing more and more her own personality, her own ideas about things, and so forth. I’m trying to be mindful of that, to pay attention and not miss it, especially with Baby 3 on deck and potential diverting my awareness to her detriment. To a certain extent that’s simply unavoidable, but I really want to make a conscious effort not to shortchange the middle child.

Then again, maybe I worry too much (gasp, NO) and I won’t actually be able to shortchange the little girl because she will not allow it to happen. She has a determination and focus which is borderline alarming in such a small child, and when she knows what she wants she goes after it with gusto. On a recent weekend late in the morning I was still hanging out in my pajamas, as was the little guy, when the little girl started picking out her own clothes because, consarn it, she wasn’t going to just lounge the whole day away. She then proceeded to put her pants on backwards but, come on, you gotta admire the way she takes the initiative.