The Not-So-Good Old Days...

I just spent five days with my family and another family on vacation. The other family has two boys, one is six like my daughter and the other son is almost two. I had forgotten what it was like with a two year old around.

The constant, "Momma!" and pushing of buttons and whining. And this kid was about a 5 on the annoying scale to my daughter's 10 at the same age. He didn't scream so loud that my ear drums would rattle. He didn't bolt the second he was put down to go climb something he shouldn't. My Step Dad called my daughter the "Roof Baby" because if we couldn't find her she must be on the roof.

I can't believe how much of my daughter's behavior I take for granted now. When she was two I was wondering if she would be in Juvi as a teenager or in rehab.

It was that bad.

Now days they call kids like this "sprited". What a crock of crap! "Sprited" is politically correct speach for "your kid is an obnoxious pain in the ass". When she was two it was relentless. She had so much energy and no amount of playing, running, or bouncing would get it out of her.

I remember being at playgroup with kids of the same age and watching them play. My daughter had picked up a little play lawn mower and was "mowing" the lawn. She was happily marching back and forth across my friend's lawn over and over again. One of the Mom's remarked that she would sleep good that night.

Huh? I honestly had no idea what she was talking about, because - seriously - a light stroll while pushing a plastic lawn mower was NOT going to do a damn thing!

Here is an example: One day my daugher went to a three hour sport camp outside in a park. Then we had a picnic at the park and she played on the playground equipment for two more hours, then we went to the sprinkler park for a couple more hours so she could run around in the sprinklers and climb their rock wall. Was she tired after that?

Nope. Just hungry.

The worst part was that everyone didn't really believe me about her energy. They only saw her for a couple of hours at a stretch. They had no idea that she sustained that level of energy ALL day long. One of my friends learned this first hand when she moved away and we went to visit her.

On the second day my daughter was being her normal relentless-energy self when my friend got exasperated and yelled, "My God! She is SO annyoing!"

After she said it she kind of gasped and stared at me wondering what I was going to do. Later she told me that she really thought the friendship was over because of it. No doubt I was surprised she said it. But it was the truth. I looked at my daughter, looked at my friend and said, "Thank God! Someone finally admits it!"

I was so relieved that FINALLY someone else had seen what I saw. I wasn't just imagining it. My friend saw that my cute little, adorable - and very much loved - child was a big pain in the ass sometimes.

All kids are at some point or another.

Anyone who says that their kid is all sweetness and light, ALL of the time, is a liar. I put them in the same category with Stay At Home Moms who say they never need a break from their kids.

LIARS!

All of them, I tell ya!

After 5 days in a house with a two-year-old it all came flooding back. How quickly I had forgotten what it was like to have a two-year-old around. Years down the road all of that emotional and physical exhaustion that I experienced is but a distant memory. At the time I felt like a failure as a parent and was holding onto my sanity by just my fingertips. But now I know that it was just a phase.

It may have lasted for more than three years, but it was still just a moment in time.

Not a lifetime.