She’s two, but says she’s three

Maggie’s been doing a lot of developing mentally lately. One of the biggest things we’ve noticed is her recurring joke that she even laughs at:

“Maggie, how old are you?” and she looks and holds up between 3 & 5 fingers and yells “three!” with a giggle in her eyes. When we inform her that she’s two she laughs and suddenly has great difficulty saying this “two” word that she can say any other time.

Eventually she’ll growl, do a Hulk stare,  and go off and do something else.

Originally I thought this was some sort of difficulty with her saying “two” as when asked how old she is suddenly “two” becomes “fwoot” or “fhwaan,” but I’m becoming pretty certain this is just baby joke set up.

I just laugh now when she says she’s three, it seems to work for her.

ITMama’s been trying to tell her there’s a baby coming, but Maggie thinks she’s talking about an area of the stomach and when asked where the baby lives will sometimes point to her own belly. I think she’ll do good as long as we can keep her bedtime regular and the baby isn’t as loud as Maggie was.

I swear, Maggie was the loudest baby I’ve ever heard. I can still hear her one-year-old screams reverberating in my head.

I had to spend a lot of time away from her the past couple of weeks due to the worst contractor I’ve ever had the misfortune to deal with, and also some time spent with one of the better ones I’ve run into. Lot of house and apartment issues all happened at once.

One of the rentals is a block away from my house, so during an especially tiring fridge move I left about 7pm to go put Maggie down and then came back to it. Maggie was a bit annoyed at me for a week of short times being with her and also that I was a sweaty gasping mess at this point, but she let me put her to bed and woke up happy.

She’s very obviously at the terrible twos, but we seem to have found some defusing methods that have been working to help her regain her calm.

When she was younger I used to feel bad that I felt like it was a nonstop battle. the fight to get enough food in an ADHD infant, the struggles to get her to sleep, the completely random fits of baby psychosis. I didn’t feel six months ago that I was dealing with a human so much as an angry ball of frustrated potential that refused all methods of communication adimately.

Now when she’s angry, frustrated, etc, there’s a picture as to why. While I may not be able to make everything better, at least I have the help of Maggie to tell me what’s hurting, needed, not needed, etc.

And when she starts acting like she did six months ago, she agrees it’s time for a nap or to go to bed.