My two-year-old newborn (alternative title: A mother in denial)

Last night after we went to bed, I was watching Squiggles on the baby monitor. I started crying softly (as I am want to do several times a day), and said, “She still looks like  a tiny little baby, don’t you think?”  Tim was half asleep and said, “Yeah sometimes…”  I said, “Can you believe she turns two tomorrow?”  At which point Tim was fully awake and (almost) slightly emotional.  “No… I can’t,” he conceded.

She is still tiny, barely a couple pounds heavier than she was a year ago.  She still sucks her thumb and up until a few weeks ago was still nursing (yeah, I’m one of those).  She follows me everywhere and sobs if she thinks I’m cross with her.  She’s still my itsy-bitsy baby, right?

But there are signs that she is drifting away, gaining the defiant  autonomy that I desperately desire and despair, simultaneously.  The other day we were at a sandwich shop, and she kept trying to climb on the table (to better spy on the family just over the separating wall).  Tim kept telling her things like, “No arms on the table,” and “no feet on the table,” and “no legs on the table.”  Finally, she threw her arms backward, airplane style, and launched her belly onto the table with her legs reaching toward heaven – careful not to let any forbidden limbs make contact with the wooden surface.  Tim (usually a stickler for discipline) and I laughed so hard we almost cried as she concentrated very seriously on holding her pose.

Today I picked her up from preschool (ahem… daycare) and was trying to strap her into her carseat.  She was sucking her thumb, as usual, and would not release it so that I could get her arm through the strap.  “Hey Bug,”  I said, “You need to let me put your seatbelt on.” 

Without removing her thumb, she shook her head and calmly said, “No, Mama.”

“Just for a second, then you can suck your thumb again.”

More head shaking.

“Just let go for one second.”

At which point, she glared at me and partially removed her thumb just long enough to say, “Thumb stuck!”

Yes, my sweetest little love.  You are so little, just keep sucking that thumb and never, ever, ever grow up and leave me.