On the road again...

Suzannah and I are in Bozeman for a few days. I felt like a road trip. Matt, unfortunately, couldn't come with us this time -- but he'll be with us in August when we head to Glacier Park, which is my favorite place in the entire world, and a place I've missed deeply for three years. This time it was just me, my daughter, and my mom, who flew out to meet us in Washington and keep us company on the drive through the mountains. Suzannah travels so well in the car, so it was mostly a pleasant trip, unless you count the speeding ticket I was stuck with shortly before we stopped in Moses Lake for lunch. Apparently I've been complaining about it, because my dad finally reminded me that I was going twelve miles over the limit and the patrol officer had every right to pull me over, but I'm still bitter, because a.) it was my first speeding ticket, and b.) 70 is a stupid speed limit in eastern Washington. Also, I put the cruise control on after that, and then EVERYONE PASSED ME. I don't want to talk about it.

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One of my favorite coming-home rituals is eating my dad's popcorn. He makes it in this ancient popcorn popper -- it was a wedding gift to my parents, and it's missing one of the handles, but it still makes the best popcorn I've ever tasted (and popcorn, my friends, is my weakness. Yes. My only one). Every time my dad hauls it out from underneath the island in the kitchen, he says, "You know, Mom and I used to grill minute steaks in this thing back in college." He broke it out last night at my request while we watched Into the Wild, once Suzannah finally fell asleep. I've been praying fervently that she falls into a somewhat normal sleeping schedule this week, because mah baby, she has worn me out. We pulled into the driveway just past midnight the day before yesterday, and suddenly my little girl, who'd fallen asleep, oh, forty miles earlier (on a 600+ mile drive, by the way) was suddenly and laughingly wide awake. She spent the next hour tearing gleefully around Grandpa and Grandma Griffith's house, hollering and squealing and generally creating quite a ruckus for this quiet little neighborhood. I am not going to tell you what time we all managed to get to sleep, or what time she woke me up the next morning. It's just too hard for me to talk about without weeping right now.

She slept well last night, thankfully, although she was full of all kinds of stalling tricks. She'd pretend she wanted to play The Hugging Game, arranging us very purposefully on the floor -- and then she'd laugh and scurry away. Finally, I told her very ominously that I was counting to three.

"One," I began.

"TWO!" she shrieked. Clearly, SHE DOES NOT UNDERSTAND THE CONCEPT (or my tone wasn't as ominous as I thought). Or she does, but figured she'd buy herself some time by making us laugh.

I spent most of yesterday trying to recover from Wednesday's drive. We took our time along the way, stopping in Spokane to walk Blondie and let Suzannah "get the wiggles out" down at Riverfront Park, where I decided to take Suzannah on the carousel. I thought maybe we'd sit on one of the benches, but she was really eyeing those horses, so at the last minute I swung her up on one. She gripped the pole easily, like she'd done this a million times and knew exactly what she was doing, like she was telling me, okay, Mama, I can take it from here, thanks. And as the carousel began to turn and her horse moved up and down, her face broke into a grin. I stood next to her, my arm loosely circling her hips, and watched her hair blow softly back from her face.

"Wow!" she said, over and over. She'd have ridden all afternoon if she could. As we walked away, she kept turning around to point and call out, "Horsies!" Her cheeks were flushed and she smelled like summer.

Today we stopped at the park before lunch, and she played on the swings and the slide for awhile. Her reaction to the swing was much like her reaction to the carousel; she grinned, she giggled, she said "Wow!" She refused to actually slide down the slide today, but she gamely climbed the steps anyway, several times. It's such a change from last summer, when she was so bald and tottered around like a drunken sailor, or from the summer before that, when she was all milk-drunk smiles and chubby thighs. I keep looking at this photo album my mom has in the living room, and I want to reach right into the pictures and nibble on those chubby little legs. ("Why do women always talk about eating babies?" my husband asks. "It's kind of creepy.")

We're having a great time. Summer is a fabulous time to be a mom.

You've come a long way, baby

Suzannah had her two-year well-baby checkup this morning. I realize these sorts of things are probably of no interest to anyone but me, but I am going to tell you about it anyway. First of all, she's grown -- she weighs about twenty-six pounds now (after hovering around 23-24 pounds for months), and she's 34 inches tall. That puts her right in the 50th percentile or so, which means...essentially nothing. She was always in the 90's, percentile-wise, as a baby, and then once she became more mobile she slimmed way down to the 20's. Now she's somewhere in the middle. Shrug.

She adores her pediatrician and wants nothing to do with the nurses -- that hasn't changed. As soon as the nurse enters the room, Suzannah begins to climb up my torso and wrap herself tightly around my neck and head, so my answers to their questions are muffled against her stomach. Today when I put her on the scale and stepped back, she wailed and held out her arms and generally acted as though I were forcing her to sit in a pile of fire ants, but the moment her doctor entered the room she was showing him her kitty and pointing out pictures in one of the books she'd found underneath the exam table.

Anyway, he told me she's perfect. I always sort of want to take him out for breakfast when he says things like that. And I also feel ridiculously proud that she's so healthy and happy, and the fact that I immediately wanted to call my husband and my mother and tell them how much she weighs and how tall she is as we drove home brings me to the realization that I'm probably going to become one of those parents who openly weeps when her child graduates from preschool. I could hardly make it through high school graduation this year, because I kept imagining my daughter up there, sixteen years from now. Have a baby, I've learned, and you will become all the things you used to make fun of. It's true.

On the (not so) Terrible Two's

A few weeks ago, I was telling someone that the "Terrible Two's" are really a myth, that two is a pretty fantastic age and that the really horrible tantrums are more of an eighteen-month-old thing. Back in the days of Suzannah's youth, she could throw some pretty impressive tantrums -- you'd get as far as pursing your lips to tell that girl no and she'd fling herself face down on the kitchen floor and wail. Poor Blondie spent a lot of time hiding out in our bedroom, her paws clamped firmly over her ears, I'm sure.

But now that's she's two years old and practically a kindergartener, all grown up, I explained, tantrums aren't as much of an issue. Her vocabulary is growing all the time, and she's finding words to express herself! She doesn't have to resort to stomping her little feet and pointing and hollering "Ehhhhhhhmmyyyyymama!" In short, she's learning how to deal with conflict quite nicely!

Right.

Apparently I'd forgotten about the very public fit she threw at the mall when I tried to run errands with her, because I wouldn't let her run up the aisles at a store holding something breakable, something I had not actually purchased nor had any intention of purchasing. There she was, face down on the floor in the store, howling as though I'd just told her that THERE IS NO COOKIE MONSTER. Twenty-five pounds of fury -- and she was mine, all mine! I think that little shopping trip lasted all of twelve minutes.

But hey, those days happen. Sometimes I'd like to throw myself down on the floor and have a good howl, too, but then I remember that I'm not two, and I have farther to fall.

Still, I've noticed something recently. Suzannah does less of the body-slamming on the kitchen floor, less of the head-butting maybe, but she's discovered a powerful new weapon -- the Angry Toddler Scream. She only breaks it out when things are really bad, like, say, when we pour her milk into the pink cup with the green lid instead of the pink cup with the purple lid. Or when the dog looks at her while she's eating. (Yes, Blondie may have snatched a fish stick directly from Suzannah's hand, but Suzannah has also been known to allow the dog to lick oatmeal off her fingers, so who can blame her for trying?) These days, Suzannah is liable to start hollering, "NO! MINE! MINE! PUPPY!" if Blondie dares to poke her head into the kitchen -- it's like she's hollering "BEAR!" or something, like a warning, like we're supposed to head for cover, or possibly spray the dog in the face with something. Water, maybe, or pepper spray. What usually happens is that one of us will sigh and say, "Blondie's fine. Eat your food. Ignore her." This works about as well as it used to work when my mother would tell me to ignore my little brother when he was LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT.

It sort of serves me right for being all, "We're so beyond tantrums!" Go ahead and laugh. It reminds me of the time when my friend Tisha asked, 28 weeks into my pregnancy, if I had any stretch marks. I bragged pretty noisily about not having a single one, and naturally, when I woke up the next morning? There they were, in all their decorative glory. I never really bothered to get too angsty over my stretch marks, though, because for the most part, I really loved being pregnant. And I'm trying to take the Angry Toddler Scream in stride, too, because for the most part, two is a completely fantastic age. She's curious about everything and wants it to have a name. She's cuddly and affectionate. She teases us by hiding behind the glider in her bedroom and then jumping out and shrieking, "Peek-boo! I see you!" (Which sounds sort of like, "I thee-ewe." Admit it, that's even cuter.)

I keep a journal for Suzannah in which I write letters to her -- I started it when she turned one, and it's so much easier for me to maintain something like that than, say, a scrapbook. Someday, when she's old enough, when it feels right, I have this idea that I'll give it to her. This is part of what I wrote on the night she turned two:

There's nothing terrible about your turning two. Watching you grow is the greatest joy of my life. There's a bittersweetness to your growing older, of course; sometimes I miss the nights when you shared our bed and fell asleep at my breast, and I feel a little weepy when I box up another set of clothing you don't fit into anymore. I see newborns and marvel at their newness, at how tiny they are, and I try to remember what you were like as one. But the truth is, Suzannah, that I wouldn't wish you back to babyhood. I have loved it all, and I would never dream of rushing any part of the journey, but there is just so much to look forward to. Everything you leave behind means opening the door to something new and wonderful, and I just hope I can keep and hold the sweet, sweet memories along the way -- and then all we can do is hang on tight and enjoy the fabulous ride.

The Hugging Game

Parents of toddlers understand that bedtime rituals can get a little ridiculous. I'm constantly fascinated, amused, and outright baffled by the things Suzannah seems to require before she'll give in to sleep. For awhile, she absolutely had to have her pink plastic comb; she slept with her fist curled tightly around it, and woe to the parents who dared to misplace it. (I still remember the night we couldn't find it. "What do you mean, you don't know where it is?" I hissed at my poor husband as he glanced nervously at our daughter. She was glaring at us, sort of clenching her fists and getting ready to let out a good howl -- until he found the blasted thing in his pocket. So I started making some equally ridiculous rules to accompany my daughter's ridiculous bedtime necessities, like THE PERSON TO GET HER OUT OF BED IN THE MORNING HAD BETTER DARN WELL KEEP TRACK OF THE STUPID COMB.)

Then she forgot about the comb -- either that or we lost it for good, because I haven't seen it around lately -- and began sleeping with an old cell phone. She traded the old cell phone for a pink plastic cell phone that came with a purse she received as a birthday present. (Yeah. My two-year-old has her own cell phone. And yeah, I'm sure that if she doesn't have a real one by the time she enters kindergarten she'll soon find herself in an advanced state of decay.) She actually sleeps with this thing pressed against her face, like she's talking on it. What happened to teddy bears? Oh, except she has a bunch of those, too, and she's never particularly interested in them until bedtime, when she has to hold each one of them up and we have to name them. Yes, Suzannah, that is a bear! And an elephant! And a giraffe! And a moose! And a Cookie Monster! And then she has to stack them in a particular order, and don't think you're going to speed the process along by helping, OH NO. Do you want to see what happens if you mess up her system? Then you can come to my house and do bedtime, and I'll be at the Starbucks up the street reading a book until I can't hear the howling anymore.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought some clippy little bows for her hair. This is actually a Very Big Deal, because Suzannah hasn't even had enough hair for those teeny, tiny, spiky little pigtails that other little girls seem to sport starting at about ten months, but recently, she seems to have grown enough for me to clip some to the side. She's just too precious in them, and since she started wearing them, we haven't had any nice old men hollering, "Well, who's this little fella?" at church. (Seriously. It doesn't matter how much pink we make her wear.) Suzannah tolerates the bows well enough, I suppose, but she rarely keeps them in her hair for very long during daylight hours. No, she prefers to wear them with her jammies -- the more, the merrier. The other night I clipped two of them into her hair, but she continued to point at her dresser and whine, "BOW!" Oh, good grief. So, like any mother firmly holding her ground against such an unreasonable child, I said, "Okay, Suzannah, but JUST ONE MORE." Luckily, the third bow seemed to do the trick. She dropped to her mattress and said, very sweetly, "Nigh-nigh!"

Now, say what you want about all this, but Suzannah didn't actually start sleeping through the night until fairly recently. She was all right after she turned one, but around eighteen months something horrible happened and we found ourselves with something resembling a newborn again, only this child weighed TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS instead of ten pounds, and I couldn't just slide her into bed with us and nurse her back to sleep. For several weeks -- months, decades, whatever -- we dealt with a child who was seemingly allergic to sleep, and didn't mind sharing that fact. Loudly. All night long. I may or may not have hysterically informed my husband that if he didn't get THAT LITTLE OPERATION then I would do it myself, because I was sure I had some nail scissors lying around.

But then one night, she went to bed without a fuss and slept all night long. Until eight o'clock in the morning. And she's been doing that more or less ever since then. Perhaps you can understand why I'm willing to find the plastic comb, have conversations on a pink plastic cell phone, name all of her animals, and fix her hair before she GOES TO SLEEP. Maybe I'm spoiling her, sure, but you know, I don't really care, because -- did you get that part? -- WE ARE ALL SLEEPING. (My mother says, like it's no big deal, "Well, of course, she was at Grandma's house." This is true. We were visiting my parents for Spring Break, and I thought, great, at least she can play with Grandpa and Grandma while I take a nap or two, but it turns out I didn't even need to. Because we all. slept. all. night. And for some miraculous reason, she found that sleeping-all-night thing to her liking, so she kept doing it even after we came home.)

There's one part of Suzannah's bedtime ritual, though, that isn't ridiculous. We call it The Hugging Game, and it started before one long night of sleep deprivation. Despite my sincere belief that I'd never sleep for more than 90 minutes at a time ever again, I wanted to laugh because we're parents to this hilarious child, this little golden miracle, and we could talk about her all night, about how much we love this, about how the sleep deprivation will not kill us and is, in fact, worth every moment because do you know what she did? She made us sit on the floor and she hurled herself back and forth between us, giggling, throwing her arms around our necks and resting her cheek against our shoulders before tossing herself into the other's arms. She still does this. Tonight, she ran into the room where my brother stays when he's here, calling "Ain! Ain!" and led him into the living room, where we sat on the floor in a circle, and she took turns hugging all of us tightly, murmuring "Hug!" each time. Finally, I said, "Okay, Zannah-bean, one more time!" and she hugged us all again before trotting off to her room, where all she required was a drink of water before curling up and saying, "Nigh nigh!"

I take back the bit about the nail scissors. I can't imagine not doing this all again. And it chokes me right up to think about it, later, when she's sleeping with her little fist curled lightly around whatever random thing she insists on taking to bed. I think about this girl of mine and about this life we're navigating together, and I think about some time in the future that seems so distant now but will be upon me in an instant, when I will remember nights like this -- lying in my husband's arms, talking about the hugging game, and wanting to preserve the now of my life in all its uncertain beauty.

Another place to play...

I've kept an online journal since 2001, but due to the nature of my job, I've kept my "real life" readership to a minimum. However, I also want a space where I can share stories about Suzannah, our family, and life in the Pacific Northwest with people who might be interested in reading (hi, Mom!). I'm not sure how I'll like maintaining two blogs, but I've had this one for nearly a year now, and I thought it was time for a test-drive.

Now, if only we could banish the word blog from the English language.