Is This Two?

Maybe the other mothers out there can offer me some enlightenment on this topic.

For a little over a month now, Nora has been two. And ever since that lovely birthday spent at the cottage eating pink and mocha cupcakes, she has been very… emotional. Things seem a bit more difficult. Daycare drop-off is no longer an easy transaction. Getting dressed is the hardest part of our day and this week, even bedtime (which was a later-than-normal but relatively easy 15-minute ritual) has become controversial. I am never, ever, on time for work.

I’m not too sure what’s going on with my wee Nora. I know that she’s had a cold on and off for about two weeks now but it hasn’t seemed all that bad, though she is stuffy in the mornings. Our days haven’t been traumatic that I know about – we’ve had a few houseguests come and go, and we weathered a return to work and daycare schedules after our vacation at the cottage – but perhaps there’s something bubbling under the surface that I don’t know about. Perhaps something has destabilized her somehow. I know the first week at the cottage was a bit weird for her; she was having fun, but still kept asking to go home. That soon shifted to “don’t want go home!” and when we were at home, “want go to the cottage!” so I feel like that has become ok for her. No worries there, I don’t think. House guests throw her off for a couple of days. She loves having them, but the routine is different and she reacts to it in subtle ways: waking up at night more, resisting daycare more, clinging to mommy more.

Aside from all this, things have been pretty cheery in her world. She goes to daycare, yes, but that’s not a horrible thing (at least I hope it isn’t). She plays with her friends and eats all her lunches and has all of her naps at the regular times. She plays outside and is happy to see me when I pick her up. When we get home we usually play outside for an hour, just horsing around rolling down the grassy hill, picking apples, playing with the dog, messing around in the veggie garden picking tomatoes and zucchinis and petting fuzzy caterpillars. Then we go inside and have dinner. Daddy comes home and one of us plays with Nora while the other makes dinner. Big messes are made with markers and water and vegetables and many changes of footwear. Sometimes she has a bath, which involves lots of drawing with the bath markers and splashing and ‘swimming,’ followed by naked monkey shenanigans. She is wacky and smart and chatty through all of that. All seems totally fine until pyjama time, then bedtime. I was so smug last week because she’d started to go to bed a bit earlier, but this week I’ve had my comeuppance as she’s back to her usual later-than-a-toddler-should-go-to-bed schedule.

Lately everything is an emergency. She makes this strange high-pitched panicky noise that sounds like a distressed monkey whenever something is temporarily amiss. She lays on the floor with her bum in the air and wails. She has a very specific idea of exactly which dishes she needs to use at suppertime (water in the BLUE cup!) and getting her dressed must sound to the neighbors as though I’m scorching her with a branding iron. I no sooner get an arm into a t-shirt or a leg into her pants than she screams and pulls it all off again. It is quite stressful. By the time we get into the car (late) we are both worn out.

So I can’t figure out what’s changed, and I wonder if I get to chalk it up to the terrible twos. I expected two to be defiant, noisy, messy, petulant and sometimes tantrumy. I didn’t expect it to be sad and quiet and shaken-to-the-core upsetting for both of us.

God help me when it comes time to get her into her snowsuit (shudder).