twenty-two months

It took five months but I eventually found a way to remind my girl just how much I love her and how much I need her. It has been well documented and witnessed by every relative under the sun that for the first five months after I brought her brother home from the hospital, my girl, my best girl, wanted nothing to do with me. She cried if I tried to read her a story or give her a bath or put her down for a nap. She wanted Daddy. She changed her mind one day this month and now she is demanding Mommy for EVERYTHING again. I'm not complaining.

The first night that she requested that I put her to bed after her bath I laid there on the floor snuggled in close to her on her big pink pillow and wept. I sobbed all the way through Go Dog Go! both times she made me read it. I told her how much I missed her and that I was sorry that I was busy taking care of her brother and didn't get to read her very many stories lately. I vowed that things would change. I promised. I pulled her in as close and I could and I smelled her freshly washed hair and touched her face and studied each and every inch of her. I can't put into words how much I missed her, how I longed for that closeness again and how incredibly happy I am to have it back.

She now knows the routes we take to go to certain places, dictating THAT WAY or NO MOMMY, OTHER WAY when we are driving in the van. When we go through the tunnels she wants to go swimming and she cries when she realizes that's not where we are going. She demands MUFFINS when I'm driving home from daycare because she wants to go to the grocery store and get a free donut hole.

Her bedtime ritual is by far my favorite part of the day and it always follows the EXACT same chain of events. 1. "Renee, are you ready to head upstairs and get ready for bed?" 2. "GLASS OF MILT! GLASS OF MILT!" 3. Get said glass of milt and ask her 47 times if you could please carry it up the stairs so that she doesn't fall on her face. 4. Get to top of stairs, try to shut the gate. "NAE SHUT GATE!" 5. Renee shuts the gate. 6. Renee goes to her room and demands that we move her big pillow from her floor onto Mommy and Daddy's bed. 7. She then demands Mr. Tiger and Mr. Doggie (you can thank my husband for those uber creative names). 8. "BLANTIES, MOMMY!" 9. I get the blankets (she has two matching blankets that was intended to be one for back-up but NO, she wants them both now. At all times.) 10. She lays down on our bed and literally chugs every last drop of her milk. 11. We all go to Cam's room and she tries on all of his various hats and then she cries for a while about wanting to sit in the rocking chair. 12. Bath. 13. Wrestle flailing body into PJs while she tries to run away from us jumping on the bed. 14. Attempt to tame the wild mane (she HATES to have her hair combed or touched) 15. Lay down and read stories. She has to read each book two times. It is the weirdest thing I have ever seen. Not three times or four times, ALWAYS twice. She cries when I turn out the light and then falls asleep within seconds of me laying back down next to her.

She absolutely loves to be outside and throws Category Five fits every time it is time to go in. A-N-N-O-Y-I-N-G. She doesn't like to get her hands dirty and she told me her shoes needed to be cleaned the other day. I wiped off the top but I have to draw the line somewhere. And that line is being drawn at cleaning the BOTTOM of shoes, even if nothing would make Renee happier.

She says Messy or Ishy when she spills something and can NOT relax until it is cleaned up. A girl after my own heart. She doesn't like change of any sort and insists on wearing the exact same coat and the exact same pair of shoes every single day. If I try to put a different jacket on her, she cries and says "NO, OTHER COAT MOMMY!" I LOVE to buy little girl shoes but really it is totally a waste of money because once she decides she likes a pair that is all she will wear.

She started singing this month, totally out of tune with inflection all wrong and it makes me laugh so hard. She sings Happy Birthday and her ABCs and she'll start singing the next Laurie Berkner song on the DVD before it starts. She gets to the Q in her ABCs before she sort of fizzles off like she isn't sure how it goes and she skips the letter E and the letter M EVERY SINGLE TIME.

She counts everything but it is usually out of order. I ask her how many kisses she wants when I'm leaving for work and without fail, every single time, she requests five. So we count each of the five kisses and she whines a bit about me leaving. She talks in sentences. The other day she looked at me and said "Simon puked and Mommy cleaned it up. Ishy." I laughed out loud. Seriously, where did my baby go?

I'm excited to hear all about what she learns next. She's OBVIOUSLY a super genius and she picks up things so fast, is so curious and creative and excited to learn all about the world. I can't wait to show her the flowers and the trees budding (DO YOU HEAR ME, DULUTH? IT IS TIME FOR THE TREES TO BUD). I can't wait to teach her how to water the gardens. I can hardly wait to pick her the first flower out of the garden and give it to her to rip apart. Seeing the world, this great big world, through their eyes is the greatest thing about these children. The excitement and the awe over simple things that we take for granted. The funny thing is that I'm in just as much awe as she is except it is not over the flowers or the squirrels or the robin, I am in awe with her.   

Comments

[kim]

they are at SUCH a fun age. i am loving it.

although max does not want his mommy right now... ALL he wants is daddy. he is obsessed and follows tom around everywhere. i'll go in to get him after he wakes up and he cries and says 'dada?'. he does not want to say goodbye to me in the morning. he does not want me to pick him up. the only thing keeping me sane about it is that tom is gone so much right now, so he gets stuck with me. :) he is also obsessed with his grandpas and bruce (bruce is mary's husband who he sees for MAYBE 10 minutes a week, yet all he talks about on the way to her house is bruce). so i'm thinking maybe it's a guy phase - girls are icky. :)

i guess if he pulls the same stuff after the new baby arrives, at least i'll be used to it. :)

[Melissa]

Our babies are growing up way too fast. I can't believe how cute and independent Miss Renee has gotten. She's such a doll! We need to get her and Ava together again. They will have a blast together! I'll check out the calendar and let you know what works for us. Miss you!

[LeeAnn Howard]

Got your link from Nicole's blog, and may be a new reader of yours! I think your post about your daughter is way too cute! I too would be crying my eyes out if all of a sudden my 1st born finally opened up to me. Im hoping i dont run into that when i have my 2nd son in August. My oldest is 3.5, but is still so much my baby!
Look forward to reading more! :)

[jenny]

she's so adorable! :)

you need to get video of her singing on her - that stuff just kills me! they are just totally in their own little world, singing away without a care. gotta love it.

[anne]

Yeah, the whole knowing where we are when we're driving in the car thing blows my mind! They are just so much more aware than we think they are! Ryan also likes to tell me which way he'd like for us to drive. And no matter which direction we're coming from, he always knows where the ice cream shop by our house is. (I know I have myself to blame for that one.)