Toddlers are pretty amazing creatures. They’re just great big balls of pure, random emotion. Nothing feels better than the sheer excitement they have when they see you for the first time when they get home at the end of the day: “Mommy!!” with arms outstretched, and smile wide, eyes bright. Similar force of emotion drives their not-so-positive behavior, and he’s not so reasonable when he’s extremely disappointment that the milk is in the green cup instead of the blue one as he requested. Luckily, they’re also really, really cute at this age!
My toddler, also happens to be a sarcastic old man trapped inside a toddler’s body. When he bumped his head the other day, he allowed his dad to briefly comfort him, then quietly walked over to the kitchen where the “real” comforter of the family was cooking. He looked up at me expectantly. I picked him up, and gave him a hug as he laid his head against my chest. “Your head still hurts?” “Yeah,” said in the congratulatory tone of a parent proud of a child for guessing the correct answer mixed with a bit of pitifulness—delivered with a touch of side eye he’s been giving since he was 3 months old. So I patted his back—really laid it on thick. I really thought this was hilarious—how he had just quietly walked away from my husband like—yeah, I’m gonna go get this mama-cuddle, but I’m not gonna hurt your feelings. So funny. He wasn’t dramatic about it at all.
This little one keeps me laughing. I can’t wait to see who he is as he gets older. My older one, he’s a great big heart. I tell everyone—I don’t know what he’s going to do, but he’s meant to touch people’s lives. This younger one…I laugh, because I see him and think “World Domination.” At 17 months, what’s supposed to be the height of separation anxiety, he walked into a bustling Halloween party full of screaming 5-7 year old kids and adults with his chest stuck out, reading the room, with a smirk on his face and didn’t look for me until it was time to eat. He had everyone eating out of his hands. This kid is so much fun, and so much challenge. I pray every day he loves school, because you don’t MAKE him do anything.
Where am I going with this. I don’t know. Just an ode to my younger son, I guess. An ode to where we are. I realized that because the toddler days are so crazy, and my experiences with my older one are so much more—organized, I’d written more about him, and it seemed unbalanced. Unfair. So this was a shout out to the littler little.
The other day, he walked up to me, out of the blue, and in toddler speak said, “I lub you” while I was doing something random in the living room. I was so touched, because before that, he had only ever said thank you when I told him I loved him. And I wanted to remember it. And now I will.