You Say You Want a Revolution

It has begun. I am officially the mother of a Terrible Two. I am thankful that DestructoGirl waited until AFTER Littlest One was born, but was really wishing we could just skip that phase altogether as we were blessedly able to do with Captain Chaos...

Alas, it is not to be.

We are under full seige, battle stations ready, hunkered down in our foxholes...ok, I'm out of wartime analogies...phew!

It started about 3 weeks ago with the claim of "I do it. I big!" over the hairbrush...followed by the demands to drink from a cup without a lid...followed quickly by picking out what clothing would be worn each morning...soon, we were inundated with "No, I can do it" followed by anywhere from 3 to 25 seconds of attempts, followed by "I need hel-lp!"

As I watch each day, I'm bombarded with this reminder that my little girl is just that: a little girl. No longer my baby, no longer dependent upon me to do all things, or even most things for her.

She can proudly climb onto the step stool and wash her hands, get a drink in a Dixie Cup, get her toothbrush, the hairbrush, her barrette suitcase (yes, I said suitcase), and any and all things on the counter top. She is tall enough to reach the light switches in all the rooms of our house, and can work the deadbolt locks on our exterior doors. She can pick out her clothing from her dresser (which now resides in the bottom 4 drawers lest she climb on the stool and pull the entire thing down on her head even though it's anchored to the wall), and get dressed all by herself.

This last is the most amusing, and the least damaging to anything by my eyesight and people's opinion of my fashion sense. It started one day when she very carefully opened her case (really just the size of a small make-up kit) of hair accessories and, after much deliberation, selected the neon orange duck, and the purple bunny. I asked if she was sure those were the ones she wanted (we'd been going through the "sparkly" phase) and she said "yes". So, we put the mismatched barrettes in her hair, and she immediately began parading all around asking if we'd seen her pretty barrettes and weren't they "bootiful"? Not even 3 days later, she came into our bedroom around 7am (she slept in that day), completely dressed in her pink shirt, leaf green pants, and purple socks. Just yesterday, she had on a shirt with a pattern in one color family, and a skirt with diagonal stripes in a different, non-complimentary color family.

We had errands to run. She didn't want me to brush her hair, so she did it herself, and off we went to the store. I'm 99.9% certain that the other patrons of that fine establishment thought that I was retarded, she was retarded, or we were both retarded simply based on that outfit alone. Because I failed to mention that she then chose the Care Bear socks that are ice blue with a neon green bear on them and her sandals. She also wore her Sleeping Beauty tiara.

And I must correct myself. The only patrons that thought someone was retarded are the ones who have never been around a 2 1/2 year old girl with an independent streak 5 miles wide.

Why did I allow this to happen? Have I sent up the white flag, the parley, the offer of surrender?

Nope. I learned early on that a good general learns which battles are the important ones, the turning point of the war.

And I decided that day, that creating a scene over clothing was simply not important.

Besides. Captain Chaos is channeling Cliff Claven from Cheers this summer with his socks...

Some day, I'll be able to post a photo of these crazy occurrences...but today, I'm reinforcing the bunker walls for another assault on my sanity.