Dear Connor - 32 Months

Dear Connor,
Your Dad hasn’t started working again yet and I’m faced with the possibility of going back to work… and suddenly I just can’t get enough of you. When I was staying home and it was just me, you and your brother some days all I wanted to do was run upstairs and lock myself in the linen closet so I could be alone for five minutes. You have to understand that I’m an only child. That I’ve always had a large group of friends around, but have never minded being alone and sometimes even relished it. Moving from living by myself to not being able to pee alone, was a much bigger adjustment than I had anticipated, most likely because I never anticipated it at all. Now that I’m thinking about joining the workforce again I keep looking at you and thinking about all of the stuff I’ll miss. I think about how you are going to be in school before I know it and that not too soon after that, you’ll only be seen in public with your Dad and me if it involves a new PlayStation.

We’ve been working on potty training this month and you are doing quite well. You are happy to pee on the potty as long as you have a constant reminder that it’s something you need to do. We haven’t made it to the pooping part yet, mostly because you insist on holding yourself up on the regular potty instead of using one of the three child size potty seats we have in the house. It’s hard to relax when you are dangling over a hole filled with water. I think your aversion to the seat is that you never see us use and because of that, you won’t either. If I could fit my butt onto one to show you how great they are, I would, but sadly, after two children and an exercise deficiency, it’s not going to happen.


You are turning into a defiant little thing and it cracks me up. It’s so hard not to laugh when I say, “ok, you need to clean this up now” and you respond with “NO! YOU NEED to clean this up now!” in all seriousness, as if I’m going to cave and start picking up the Cherrios you just threw across the floor. I never knew that attitude could come in such a small package. Sometimes it scares me because I hear myself in you. You came up to me last week when I was cleaning off the back porch and said, “You made a mess! Now I’m going to have to clean it up!” you sighed and walked away. I would have been ok with this, if you would have then actually STARTED cleaning up, instead of walking over and taking your box of crayons and dumping them out onto the floor.
We’ve moved you to a toddler bed. It’s actually not a new bed, but your crib, with the front panel removed so you still have three sides enclosing you. We added a rail to the front of the bed, so you don’t roll out and wake us up yelling. It’s bad enough that you wake us up yelling now only to announce when we come in that you either need ice water or a lullaby.

The advantage to the toddler bed is that you don’t hurt yourself climbing in and out of the crib. We decided to convert the crib because you were climbing in each night to go to bed and climbing out as soon as we left the room. We figured it wasn’t really keeping you in anyhow, so what was the point. Now that we’ve removed the bed, it’s a free for all in your bedroom at night. Although the crib wasn’t keeping you contained, it was preventing you from dragging each and every book in the room into bed to sleep with you and if you were really tired when we put you down, it just wasn’t worth the effort to you. Now that all you have to do it sit up and step out and even if you are tired, you spend a good 45 minutes rummaging around in your room, turning lights off and on and pulling the cushions out of the rocking chair just because you can. The other night I went into your room to check on you because at 9:30 the light was still on. You had fallen asleep with about 15 books in the bed with you and had a train track clutched in your fist. You were wearing underwear over your diaper and sleeping in a shirt that I’m sure I didn’t put you to bed in. You looked like you’d been to a 2 year old version of a college frat party.
With the toddler bed has begun the birth of bedtime procrastination. You want a book, another book, a lullaby, a cup of ice water, another hug, another lullaby or to find your glow in the dark lizard. Anything but bed.

You are outgrowing the nap, a turn of events that terrifies me. Once the nap is gone so is any time I get to work or do anything else that doesn’t involve a two year old trying to climb into my lap to “help”. It makes me sad in other ways too though because it’s one more step away from the womb. For two years now, I’ve scheduled our life around nap and I’m not sure how to stop. Luckily, your brother will still be napping in a couple of years, so I can be set in my ways a while longer.

One thing I’ll say about you for sure, is that you have a good time. You frolic in the grocery store and amazed by the lines of a carrot, crazy over the stickers they put on the bananas. A trip into an unfamiliar bathroom is an exploration and a flashlight in a darkened room is a thing of wonder. You marvel at the world, unstressed and free you enjoy life. Sometimes it drives us nuts, all of your investigations and lack of seriousness. That you can cackle with glee, running around the living room with a pair of underwear on your head right as we are trying to get you dressed to walk out the door to a function that we are already late to. But if I learn anything from being a mother, I hope it’s to be just a little more like you.
Love,
Mommy