Let me set the scene for you. It’s about 9:30 on a Saturday night. I finally got my three-year-old to sleep after a day with no nap. I’m 35 weeks pregnant, and my husband is out of town on the last boys weekend he will be able to go on for at least a year. And just to add insult to injury, we are moving next week pretty unexpectedly and have no place to go yet.
I’m exhausted. I hurt. I’m having terrible Braxton Hicks contractions. I feel nauseous. And that little toddler is on my very last nerve.
I could easily sit here and go on about how difficult my daughter has been the last day or so. I could easily complain about how hard it is to be pregnant while chasing a toddler. I could easily regret letting my husband go out of town this weekend.
But that’s not the way I want to end my day. I don’t want to dwell on the negative, so instead, I’m sitting here focusing on how much fun she is and how impressed I am with the little girl she is growing up to be.
Toddlers don’t always suck.
You see, when she wakes up, very often the first words out of her mouth are, “Mommy, I love you.” And it melts my heart. Even after a long battle of getting her to sleep the night before.
Or when I pick her up from school and she dashes across the room into my arms because she’s so excited to see me after just a few short hours. I mean, who else is ever going to love me that much? Nobody!
For the most part, she’s so easygoing and mild-mannered compared to other kids her age. She is pretty content playing and entertaining herself, and I love to spy on her “reading” books to herself. She has quite the imagination!
Sure, there are times when she makes me absolutely crazy: when “one more time” turns into what feels like a hundred times of playing some silly game. But there are also times when the minutes pass faster than I ever thought, and I get caught up running and playing with her as if we are the same age. It’s a rare opportunity that adults get to act like children, and sometimes it’s exactly what we need.
More often than not, you overhear people complaining about the “terrible twos” or wondering when their sweet child will stop acting like a “threenager.” I’m not saying that I’m not guilty of that, but I really have made a valiant effort to stop focusing so much on the negative and embrace each stage. Watching her develop an opinion overnight about what she wears has not been fun {we’re talking threenager attitude in full force}, but I have found a way to see the humorous side when she tries to take off what I put on her.
There’s no question that toddlers are exhausting, energy-sucking, emotional assassins, but they’re not always that bad. I urge you to take a moment to stop focusing on the bad behavior and embrace the little moments that make you smile. I promise they’re far more frequent than you realize!