Happy Birthday, Skye! (Or: The Unwelcome Arrival of the Terrible Twos)

These cupcakes were the highlight of Skye's year!

Well, you guys, it is official: we no longer have any babies in our house. We now officially are the proud exhausted parents of a "kid" and a toddler! Oh, yes, Skye's birthday arrived with a mixture of pride, excitement and a deep, pitted feeling of dread. Because we know. Yes, we know. This is our second child, we are no longer the naive, innocent parents that we once were, back when we honestly believed that life got easier as the kids got older.

You can laugh now. I'm laughing. And weeping.  At the same time.

We now know what other parents knew, those parents who looked at us with amusement and pity as we declared that Kaia was two! She was learning to talk! She was learning to do things by herself! Wasn't that great?

Wasn't it?

Those parents knew what we didn't- that life with a toddler gets a whole lot worse before it starts getting better. A. WHOLE. LOT.

Don't get me wrong- every time Skye says a new word, or is able to put together a sentence, my heart melts. Seriously, it melts. And I beam with pride when she carries her little stool over to the water cooler and gets herself a cup of water. My kid is amazing.

But she's also a toddler. Which means that along with the new words, sentences and cup-weilding abilities come other new tricks.

Like saying "no", for instance. And Skye likes to say "no". She likes it A LOT. She likes it so much that she practices saying it every chance she gets.

"Skyelar, please eat at least one bite of your food."

"No!"

"Skyelar, let's brush your teeth."

"No!"

"Skyelar, please don't completely humiliate Mummy and Daddy in the restaurant."

"No!"

And so on, and so on. You get the picture. She also enjoys combining this word with her newfound love for crossing her arms and scowling.

She has also introduced the word "why" into her everyday vocabulary.

"No, Skye, you can't play with my phone."

"Why?"

"Skye, don't pull the cat's tail."

"Why?"

Remember the arm-crossing and the scowling? Yeah, so do we.

It's awesome. I've become one of THOSE parents who bandy around phrases like, "Because I said so!" even though I swore- SWORE- I never would.

Also, what we didn't know back in the Time of Kaia was that when children turn two, they instantly develop a temporary case of Schizophrenia. Their personality completely splits in two...or three....or four.

I don't like to use words like "good" and "evil", so I'll just refer to Skye's different personalities as "agreeable", "disagreeable", "unreasonable" and "just completely batsh*t crazy".  This latter personality usually makes its appearance when she is tired, hungry, or out to brunch.

It is never dull in our house. Skye will share her orange with me, then scream when I eat it. She will ask for milk in the pink cup, then scream when we give it to her. She'll ask for a song, then scream when we play it. She'll ask to go on the swings, then scream when we try to push her. You're beginning to pick up on the pattern emerging here, right?

However, we will take this year of Terrible Twos and enjoy it while we can, because we are also wise to what comes next: the Thankless Threes, which builds on the Terrible Twos by adding the ability to reason and argue, along with a profound sense of entitlement into the mix, just to shake things up. You know, for fun.

So, Happy Birthday, Skyelar! You make our life wonderful and interesting everyday!