This is me throwing up my hands and admitting my poor second child isn’t going to get monthday updates anymore. I’m not going to make it to 36 months. I’ve barely made it to 30 months. I’m not going to force myself to do these when I’m already posted dozens of photos of her every week and chronicling our lives in detail. But honestly, keeping track of Caroline’s milestones isn’t useful when she’s basically done with them. All levels of toddlerness have been achieved, game over. The only thing that makes her even a LITTLE bit like a baby is wen’re not done potty training. (Honestly, we haven’t started in earnest. I’m so lazy.) Besides the diapers, she’s pretty much identical to her 4 year old brother. And TALL. I still think of her as a peanut but her legs are insanely long.

I left her with a sitter for 9 hours on Tuesday while E and Evan and I went to Boston and she didn’t care. Whatevs, Mom. Just leave me some pizza money and a Princess movie and I’m good. I picked her up at 10 pm and she was talking a mile a minute. The sitter said Caroline seemed tired right before dinner, so Caroline went and got her pillow and blankie and put herself down for a 2.5 hour nap. Because she’s a real human person. A tiny, curly-haired, amazing little person.

Two and a half is basically the very best and the very worst. SO WORST. Taking her on vacation was the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done, including giving birth. She can be incredibly unreasonable one minute and perfectly reasonable the next, so it makes dealing with her more like hostage negotiation than anything else. I’m tempted to videotape our next argument and share it, but anyone who has ever had a 2 year old can tell you exactly what it looks like. Plus I don’t want her to have MORE things to complain to her therapist about some day. Her emotions are just totally unpredictable. At the beach, she rocked over her toe with a huge rocking chair, crushed her nail and bled all over the place. She cried for like, 90 seconds and then was totally fine, even as we bandaged it up. But GOD FORBID you get tired of holding her upside down by her feet after 10 minutes, or she’ll scream at you for an hour straight.

Likes include talking, eating, talking, eating, talking, the iPad, the other iPad, my iPhone, movies, Macklemore, singing, dancing, cats, dogs, talking, running, jumping, pretending she’s a kitty, ponies, drinking water, Princesses, Elmo, pillows, hugs, climbing, dolls, gently sloping sand beaches, seashells, buckets, marshmallows, eating, talking, eating, making up songs, spinning until she’s so dizzy she falls down, ice cream, cheese, Daddy, Evan, and me.

Dislikes include swimming, swimming pools, boats, life jackets, sleeping past 6 am, being told NO, and being teased by her brother.

All pictures are from the lake house portion of our vacation, right around her actual 30th monthday:

 

 

30 Month Milestones (from BabyCenter originally, but they changed their format so these are from Evan’s 2 1/2 year post.)

Mastered Skills (most kids can do)
• Brushes teeth with help – Brushed teeth on her own. I go over them again just to be thorough.
• Washes and dries own hands – Yep.
• Draws a vertical line – Mostly, but would rather continue to draw the sort of creepy counter clockwise circles. I keep expecting Nicolas Cage to show up and tell me it’s part of some secret code.

Emerging Skills (half of kids can do)
• Draws a circle – Yep.
• Balances on one foot – Yep.

Advanced Skills (a few kids can do)
• Puts on a T-shirt – Yep.
• Names one color – Names all the colors and will ask you what your favorite color is and discusses in length which one is best.
• Names one friend – Names all her friends, plus her aunts and uncles (both real and basically-like-family) and all her grandparents.

I am enjoying the CRAP out of having a 2 1/2 year old right now. A lot of the time with kids, they have SO MANY NEEDS that you expend all your energy fulfilling them and don’t have any left over for fun stuff like playing trains or teaching them to fist-bump-then-blow-it-up or reading The Napping House fifty bazillion times a day. I’ve felt like that a lot over the past year – which is probably the opposite of shocking, seeing as how that’s when I doubled my need-o-meter by adding ANOTHER tiny helpless human to the mix. I’m not saying I haven’t enjoyed anything up until this point, but lately I’ve found myself doing a lot more fun kid stuff instead of parenting stuff. I almost say that I’d be OK with Evan dropping his nap if he wanted (it would free up our schedule SO MUCH!) but I’m not quite there yet. Sometimes I still need a minute to shower, you know?

DID YOU HEAR THAT UNIVERSE? I said DON’T drop the nap yet. DON’T.

I don’t think being exactly 2 years and 8 months old is the deciding factor in enjoying my kid more. I think it mostly has to do with this stage of understanding and development and communication and self-control. I haven’t had to drag him kicking and screaming and crying out of anywhere for almost a month. He understands consequences BEFORE they happen, so I can threaten time out or no games or being sold to a circus without actually having to do it. He has ALL THE WORDS and can tell me what hurts or why he’s sad or what he needs without screaming at me. He can be reasoned with. And since we’re using our words when we’re angry, we’re also using our words when we’re sitting on the couch or riding in the car or watching TV or making dinner. He asks “whachu doin’, Mommy?” Yesterday I told him I was making a pinata for Caroline’s party. He looked it up and down, and then said “AWESOME Mommy! High five!”

How can you NOT love that kid?