Baby to Kid

Everyday LB learns something new. She has learned how to put her feetin the corresponding leg hole of her undies, and for the most part, can successfully pull them up without giving herself the wedgie from hell. For those of you without toddlers, I know this sounds like peanuts, but trust me, we have been through 6 months of trial and errorbefore this momentous achievement took place.

They say the defininition of patience is watching someone else sweep. I say, try watching a toddler put her underwear on correctly. Then watch toddler go to the dark side.

Watching your kid learn how to do something new has got to be one of the best things about being a parent. Its also one of the hardest things: resisting the urge to just do it for them. When LB was learning how to put her undies on, I literally had to leave the room, because it was almost an automatic reaction for my hand to shoot out and direct her foot into the right leg hole. So I finally just set the undies down on the floor and let her handle it. Most of the time she would come into my room with the undies up around her waist, both legs through one single hole. We would fix it and the same thing would happen next time.

Its crazy, cause you do EVERYTHING for your baby during its first year of life. You feed it, you change it, you put it to sleep. Without your daily intervention, it would not survive. Then one day BOTH of you have to make a complete 360 degree reversal, where your child realizes its not the center of the world anymore and you have to restrain yourself from doing everything for it.

The joke is totally on us, and someone has a real sick sense of humor.

Remember everything you learned during your baby’s first year of life? Oh yeah, those long hours of care and feeding are completely useless now, you’re gonna have to start from scratch again.

*Flips Mother Nature The Bird*

I know I’m still just a rookie mom. I have yet to experience the horrors of rewiring my brain for the secret lives of teen girls, and teaching my daughter how to drive a car, but this transition from baby to kid is so insanely awesome yet frighteningly hard. Seeing LB play with her dolls is so delightful, I could watch her for hours. Dragging a screaming LB while gimping on one leg and simultaneously dropping the contents of your heinous purse in the street; definitely worth a few angry tears.

Yesterday as I my daughter sprinted down the sidewalk towards the open road, with me frantically hopping in my ortho-boot after her, one of the project girls looks at me and said “Does she EVER listen to you?” I really wanted to tell her where to go, but I was busy trying to prevent a major toddler disaster.  The timeout situation that followed was not pretty.

Later, as I was putting LB to bed for the 5th time, she says to me, “Kiss, Mommy, Kiss?” Its the first time she’s asked for a bedtime kiss.

Did I mention how much I love watching her do new things?