2 3/4

Do you know a 2 year old?  When my first child was born, people told me that I would keep track of all kinds of data–the dates of his first smile, first tooth, sitting up, first word, etc. And there would be lots of pictures.  Then with subsequent children, that habit would quickly shrink to a few snapshots of your last child.  So to avoid their predictions (I can be a little rebellious), I didn’t keep track of any of that from the very beginning.  (Though we do have quite a bit of home video of the first year of our oldest child doing what his siblings declare is pretty much nothing at all–hey, video cameras were pretty new back then.)

But now my youngest child is going through all those stages, which is such a different story. The first is certainly a life changing event, but so is the last (no disrespect intended to all those precious children in the middle). I go through thinking this is the last pregnancy (no nostalgia for me there), last birth, last child I’ll nurse, and eventually, last time we’ll go through potty training (which is helping me not care so much that she’s taking her own sweet time).

And at the same time, every once in a while I try to remember when my teenagers were 2, and I can’t!  Okay, I can somewhat, but there are so many things I can’t remember!  Life is so busy, we move on to the next hectic year without time to reflect on each month of each child.  Pictures and home video help, of course, but last month I was reflecting on some of the posts here and the need to remember.  And later I wrote this short poem to remember a moment in the life of loving a two year old.

Two and Three Quarters

She is very serious
holding up her little index finger
bouncing her fist for emphasis on each syllable
looking up at me
through her eyelashes.
“One more time.”

“Okay, one more time.”
Again I reach to the wall
Making a tunnel for her to run under.

Through the tunnel
Past the stairs
the front door
front room
dining room
and back into the kitchen.

She resumes the posture
gives me the look
and repeats
“One more time.”