I love 2.5

I am seriously loving this age that H is at now. It’s like the last 3 months of terror were totally worth it.

She’s so incredibly sweet. She cuddles with me in the mornings and sings me awake. Sometimes they are “real” songs, sometimes they are awesome made-up songs. She makes up songs. All. The. Time. They are great. Absolutely amazing.

We play games together. She blows me away with her awesome imagination. She loves to play restaurant and for us to take turns serving each other. She adores her baby dolls.

She says the funniest things. Like when my friend S drove away the other day, H shouted, “Oh, S! Wait! Come back! I have some questions for you now!” Completely random. But she was so genuine about it, I couldn’t help but laugh.

And when I took her and B to the Play ‘n Learn at the Y yesterdayand B started to fuss, she “held” him so he wouldn’t be sad. She’s so sweet and protective of her baby brother. She’s so much more kind to him. When she does something that isn’t particularly sweet to him, she catches herself and says things like, “Oh, that made B really sad. I should do xyz so that he’s happy again.”

She loves on me and cuddles with me. Which is the greatest thing ever. She’s happily a love bug. And yesterday she even fell asleep for a nap on top of me, which completely melted me. She hasn’t napped on me since B was a newborn.

She’s more patient now.

The tantrums. The inconsolable meltdowns. They’re mostly gone. And when she does get overly-frustrated or tired, she stops and asks, “Can I just have a hug?” and we sit down together and hug until she’s calm. No more major freak-outs.

She’s reasoning with me when applicable.

Everything isn’t a fight. I don’t say the sky is blue and she insists it’s orange. She doesn’t ask for a banana and when I give her one freak out that I gave her a banana because she really wants an apple!

It’s crazy how it all changed at once. And I don’t even know why. Or what clicked.

I mean, things were seriously hard. I walked into a different room and just had to say to myself more than once, “I really love her. I do not want to yell at her. That will accomplish nothing. I am the adult. I must show her a good example of how I want her to behave. I really love her. I do not want to react in a way I will regret later.” She was, as my little sister put it so delicately, a hellion.

She is still 2. She’s still far more vivacious than most kids I know, and I figure she always will be. And to be honest, it’s one of my favorite things about her, even if it makes parenting her a bit challenging at time.

But now we are at a place where I thoroughly enjoy being with her everyday. I mean, of course I’ve always been happy to be home with her, but for awhile there I also kind of dreaded it. Because I knew there would be so much screaming and crying…over essentially nothing, and I felt a bit helpless with helping her. And deeply questioned my peaceful, mostly non-punitive parenting beliefs. 

  

But, I stuck with my guns and to my beliefs, and somehow, despite my crunchy, peaceful parenting beliefs, I ended up with an amazing little 2 year old, who is kind and empathetic, polite (to those who are polite to her anyway), thoughtful and loving, and who makes me smile every day.