Not the baby anymore
The Munchkin had a full-out temper tantrum on Saturday. We were taking a walk around the neighborhood, something that she loves to do. I was carrying Baby Boy in the Baby Bjorn, a front-carrying baby sling. I also used it for the Munchkin when she was tiny. The Webmaster had the Munchkin up on his shoulders for a while, but as soon as we got to sidewalks, she got down to walk.
All was well until she decided that she wanted to walk in the middle of the street, something her father and I weren’t going to let her do. Then she lost it. We literally dragged her home kicking and screaming, waiting for the cops to knock on our door asking about all the noise. She wanted me to carry her, but I couldn’t. When we got home and I took the Baby Bjorn off, she picked it up and started for the front door with it, sobbing “Up, up.”
How does one explain to a toddler that they are too big for the baby carrier? You can’t. I even called my mother to see if the Munchkin (who loves talking on the phone to anyone) would talk to her, thus distracting her enough to calm down because she had worked herself into hysterics. She and I went outside (she was still carrying the Bjorn), but she refused to talk on the phone at that moment. She eventually did calm down enough to talk on the phone briefly, and then we went back inside for dinner.
As we got her ready for bed that night, I offered to let her sit on the potty (or the “pobby”, as she calls it). She has used it once (mostly by accident – she happened to be sitting on it when she peed), but I thought it might be fun for her to just sit on it. Her diaper was wet, but she wanted to sit on the potty anyway. As I got other things ready, she picked up the gun magazine that her father had left on the counter and started to look at it. Then I heard the unmistakable tinkling sound, and started cheering. She came out of the bathroom all smiles. We were so distracted by her acheivement, we forgot to get her nighttime bottle and she went to bed without it.
It was almost as if she had come to the realization (after much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth – and yes, she’s trying to cut a molar) that she wasn’t going to get to regress into babyhood. It was gone – she was now too big and that role was filled by someone else. So she might as well go the other direction and do the “big girl” things.
However, she did demand her nighttime “baba” last night. We’ll keep working on this. Obviously, you can’t become a big girl all at once anymore than you stop being the baby all at once, either. And she stopped being the baby long before her brother showed up. No wonder she’s got angst – she’s not a baby and she’s not big. But she is loved, and if that stupid molar would come in, she would be a lot happier, too.
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