Squidbits

Squid is two. I always thought three was the Magic Number, but I'm starting to reconsider. Two is pretty damn magic. When it's not being really hard, that is, and lately it's about 50/50. His wants and needs far exceed his ability to express or satisfy them, and so we have a lot of meltdowns. It's schizoid; one moment he's sweet and cheerful and telling you earnest stories and laughing and the next he is prostrate on the ground, sobbing.

He doesn't know how to deal with being tired or frustrated (or both!) and so physical violence has started as well, as he starts to try to use his body to get the world to do what he doesn't have the words for. Some of it is mild; he pushes and pulls me by the legs, and can often be found herding the dogs around by pushing them by the butt. The kicking and slapping are no joke, though, and the headbutts can really hurt. We're trying restraint and patience (and a lot of "No kicking. That is not okay. It hurts!") and when that fails, we're trying time outs or withholding attention. I always feel like I'm doing something wrong, that there must be a better response, but I think everyone probably feels like that with a toddler.

I had to stop keeping the list of new words after his birthday, because it got too long to keep up: in February alone he said Read, Sun, Monkey, Cow, Moo, Goose, Meow, Woof, Oatmeal, Tractor, Turtle, PooPoo, Hot, Good (about food), Okay, Go, Wake up, Up, Door, Feet, Talk, Step, Water, Cars, Naked, Bird, No More, Snuggle, Shower, Light, Yoyo, Cheese, Cake, Sock, Bolt, Sticker, Smell, Red, Blue, Eyes, Baby, Rock, Stick, Dog, Horse, Beak, Sorry, Bulldozer, Beet, Date, Yam, All done, All gone, Frog, Cold, Milk, Rock, Grapes, Chicken, Lolo, Lola, Duck, Cars, See, Truck, Mama, Daddy, Bus, Horse, and PeePee for the first time. He had a funny faux-Japanese accent for a few weeks – "book" was "booku" and "cup" was "cuppu" – but the words themselves, as well as the way in which he uses them, are getting clearer and more accurate all the time.

Since I stopped keeping the list, he's said "bacon" and "grumpy" and "helicopter" and "plane" and a million other things, but you get the idea. Hi, linguistic development, there you are. He also has phrases now, but they're learned phrases (Ready, Set, Go! Bless you! One, two, three!) rather than ones he's put together himself with his own parts of speech. That will be soon, but it's not quite here yet. He doesn't actually know what many of the component words of those phrases mean yet – he just knows what the phrase is for.

He can tell you what various animals "say" even without seeing pictures of the animals. His pig snort is particularly awesome. We have continued to encourage him in the belief that giraffes say "RARRRR!" just because it cracks both of us up – yes, we are bad parents. He also thinks that frogs make a barfing noise, because he has a stuffed frog with a wide mouth and we made up a game where it eats small toys and then pukes them out – Bleahhhh, - so he thinks that's what a frog "says" now. Erm, ooops?

Bad parenting karma will get you in the end, though; my Aunt Kathy gave him a kid-sized drum set for his birthday. Drum set. Like, every parent's nightmare. But really, he has much more obnoxious toys (the driving game that honks and squeaks and rattles, the remote control toys that people have given him even though he is Way Too Little and that have to be hidden from him lest he find them and end up in frustrated tears because he doesn't know how to make them work, etc.) The drum set is actually…well, it's actually kind of cute. He prefers to have his Daddy play them while he dances, but he'll drum a bit here and there too. He's only two, and he already has more rhythm than I do…not that that's hard.

He still dances, and now he sings, too, though he prefers to have me do it. I have been called upon to create endless variations of "C is for Cookie" and "Old MacDonald" and "The Wheels on the Bus." I am required to serenade him with "Rubber Duckie" and a Woody Guthrie tune about bathing more or less non-stop in the shower, on pain of tantrum. It's a good thing I like to sing, and that I'm not godawful bad at it, at least!

God, I want to write about this month, all about it; I forget if I don't, and I know when he's three I won't even remember the little moments of now. But I am so fucking tired. Work suddenly got good, and with good comes busy, and we've traveled to LA and hosted my in-laws and planned a birthday party (cancelled on account of ill-timed pinkeye and rescheduled for this weekend) and generally worn ourselves out.

Oooh, oooh, but I wanted to tell the story about the time right at the beginning of the month that I heard this horrible, wild, girly shriek from the living room.

"Oh my God, are you okay?" I shouted, preparing to rush out and see that my husband had broken his leg or been bitten by something venomous. Before I could dry my hands from doing the dishes, however, I heard his footsteps coming up behind me.

"Guess what the Squid just gave me?" he asked.

I looked at him inquiringly and noticed that he was holding out one hand.

In which rested a big fat dog turd.

I laughed so hard I almost hurt myself.

It's not all dog poo, though. He also painted a beautiful Valentine's Day card for his Daddy – the first art project he's ever done. It was deeply, deeply frustrating for me, as I attempted to crush his creative spirit with such draconian rules as "use your hands on the paintbrush, not in the paints" and "on the paper, please" and "paint with the paint and stop playing with the paint water." I felt like a dry, soulless dictator by the time we finished that activity – it was an endless frustration trying to get him to do it "the right way" – that is, the way that made marks on the paper and limited the mess to something I could deal with – and I feel like I took away a lot of his joy in the new activity, and maybe I should have just let him make a mess and not actually paint anything. The card was very pretty, though – he told me it was a flower and kept making me smell it. "Mell good," he insisted. "Fowa!" Daddy was touched.

I have since bought washable markers. Those work MUCH BETTER. For both of us.

Enough. Enough enough. I think I hit all the highlights, and it's to bed with me now. My single recent photo has gotten lost in a computer update, and there are no others, as the Official Photographer's been sick; they'll be back eventually.