Okay, fine, you can have a pony...

Here's the thing about two-year-olds: They're often not very reasonable people.

Sometimes, a two-year-old might have a temper tantrum because you put her plate of fruit on the wrong side of her bowl of oatmeal. Sometimes, she might burst into tears because you've run out of raisins, and even though yesterday she hated raisins, wanted nothing to do with them, threw them on the floor, and fed sly handfuls of them to the dog, today she MUST HAVE RAISINS, what do you MEAN they're all gone, why don't you just go ahead and STARVE her, because you OBVIOUSLY have no regard for her well-being.

You are expected to read her mind when she invents a new game. For example, when she lies down on the floor and pats the space next to her head, you are supposed to lie down next to her, stick your feet in the air, grab them, loudly announce that you've grabbed your feet, sit up, stick your feet out in front of you, draw them back in, quickly stand up, and then trade places with her, because she's scampered to the other side of the room. What, you didn't follow that? Then YOU LOSE, my friend. And watch out, because she gets crabby when you don't keep up.

She absolutely must wash her hands in the sink immediately following a meal -- her meal, that is. If you're not through eating, well, that's too bad, because she needs to stand on YOUR chair. Not the empty one, but yours. And please make sure you reach for the right kind of soap when she asks for soap; she might actually want to try a squirt of Ultra Palmolive with Orange Extract tonight instead of the usual hand soap. You will be expected to know this based solely on the power of your intuition.

All of these scenarios, by the way, occur within the space of one hour. You're pretty much loony-tunes by six-thirty every night. When your husband walks in the door, you throw your two-year-old at him and run into the bathroom, where you lock the door for fifteen minutes. You may bring the dog with you, and the two of you will share meaningful glances.

Just kidding. Well, about the bathroom part. Really, you're okay with being a little bit crazy at the end of the day, because there are also moments when your two-year-old crawls up in your lap and lets you rock her for a few minutes. She just quietly leans her head against your chest, and you melt a little because she's so busy these days -- the cuddling has to be on her terms. She won't let you know ahead of time, and it rarely works to scoop her up while she's busy concocting her daily plan for world domination -- she'll just wriggle around and say, "Mama," until you put her down. But once or twice a day she'll just crawl right up in your arms and stay there, and you'll get to rock her and smell her hair and her sweet, soft skin, and you'll whisper that you love her, and you think there is nothing, absolutely nothing, more perfect than this moment.

And then she will place her soft little hands on either side of your face and turn your head towards her, and she will say, "Mama, kiss." And she'll pucker her lips a little and lean towards you and press those soft little lips against you. Sanity is a pretty small price to pay for that.