Annie has a new nickname in our house over the past month,
the dictator. Vocabulary.com defines a
dictator as:
“someone who has
absolute power — or who at least behaves as if they do by bossing others
around...”
I prefer the definition of a toddler dictator as:
“an emotionally unstable
pint-sized dictator with the uncanny ability to know exactly how far to push
you towards utter insanity before reverting to a loveable cuddle-monster.”
Annie is definitely a 2 ½ year old, no doubt. Some days I feel like we just live in Annie’s
world and we all must adhere to her standards.
I’ve said she was born a 'terrible 2' because she has been a
handful literally since she was only 3 weeks old.
We’ve accepted the fact that Annie is our spirited, opinionated child in which we adore her outspoken
personality but it can really be exhausting.
She makes Claire seem like the easiest child ever. I can only imagine the stories to come as she
grows up but here are a few recent ones…
Lately Annie has been a bit of a mommy’s-girl. She can say mommy 400 times in 10 seconds and
I can be looking right at her going ‘yes Annie, yes Annie’ and she will just
say mommymommymommymommy (no commas needed because she usually doesn’t take a
breath between each mommy). I think each day she tries to break her record of how many mommy's she can say in one day.
Annie has no concept of being quiet with a sleeping baby in
the house. And at her age, I don’t really
expect her to but I never knew how loud she can really be. She is like a ping
pong ball, running into everything when she walks, hollering along the
way. It’s incredible.
She’s getting better about being in the car but we still have some trying times. We recently
traveled several hours for family pictures and it was absolutely the worst car
ride to date. We literally were only in the car for 15 minutes and she was screaming about having her shoes on, I took them off and 5
minutes later she was upset that they were off and that was just the start of the craziness she put us thru on that trip.
She’s either really good in the car, or a nightmare, you never know
which you’ll get anymore.
Speaking of being in the car, when I’m driving home from
daycare, I’ll call Aaron about dinner and I can’t hear him most of the
time. I usually have to say “I’m sorry,
I can’t hear what you are saying because the dictator is yelling at me from the
backseat.”
We have 57 episodes of Mickey Mouse on DVR. I turn on one at random and she starts demanding
that isn’t the one she wants to watch.
So then she tries to tell me which one she wants to watch and I don’t
have all 57 episodes memorize and have no clue which one she's talking about, she then proceeds to throw herself to the floor screaming at me for not knowing how to read her mind.
She has the craziest tantrums over the funniest of
things. One morning she was absolutely hysterical
that I wouldn’t allow her to take a bag of Claire’s hair bows to daycare. I’m sorry Annie but I’m not going to let you
take all of Claire’s 20+ hairbbows to daycare that don’t even fit on your head
and lose them all. Basically anything random
we take to daycare, there is about a 50/50 chance we’ll get it back so No is
No.
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| The day we wouldn't let Annie take the bows to daycare, one is hysterical while the other is just happy as could be. Typical. |
I'll never forget Claire's Baptism this Spring. Not because of Claire getting baptized but rather what Annie did. I was holding Annie, Aaron was holding Claire. During the ceremony the Pastor handed me Claire's baptism candle. The instant it went to my hand, Annie grabbed onto it and had a death grip on it and her eyes were deadlocked on the flame. Annie is extremely strong, I have no doubt she can strong arm me as I'm holding her. I was terrified Annie was going to make a sudden move with the candle that sadly I didn't even really catch Claire being baptized because I was fearful of Annie burning down the church that day.
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| Check out that intensity and grip on that candle, I was absolutely petrified and could not wait to blow it out |
Moving her to a big girl bed back in February has been nothing
but a huge mistake. She won’t stay in
her bed; it’s gotten a lot better but we pretty much have to walk her back to
her room for several hours after we shut out her lights each night. Everyone
tells us to lock her in her room but I can’t do it you guys, that sounds
traumatizing! I have learned and now we will keep Claire in
a crib until she goes to college, we won't be repeating this mistake again!
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| Asleep in her tutu |
Once or twice a week she wakes up in the middle of the night
and comes back to our room and it scares the bejeebers out of me when I open my
eyes to the pint-sized dictator standing inches away from my face in the dark just
breathing on me. And when I am too tired
to walk her back, I tell her to get into bed and she always puts me in a choke
hold, her snuggles are a little too aggressive.
I never know what I’ll get for cooperation at daycare
pickup. If I walk into her room and she
comes running towards me with a smile, there is a sense of relief that it’s
going to be a good pick up. If I walk in
and she raises her eyes up at me and then looks back down at what she is doing
with no emotion, I instantly know it’s going to be a
battle getting her to leave. Nothing is
worst than having to carry a bulky, heavy car seat with an infant in it, empty
bottles, and a 30ish lb 2 ½ year old under my arms kicking, screaming and trying to
bite me, all by myself. I can’t leave
either unattended in the car so I have to take them both at once. There are
just days when she doesn’t want to leave at all and candy bribery is losing it's effects. I’ll even leave her room, go
get Claire and come back and acting like I’m leaving her doesn’t make a
difference.
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| The 'Dictator' has a lot of sass |
Annie’s No’s come out sounding like Mo. We are always asking her “who is Mo?” It’s No.
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| A look at our bribery -- "if you put your pjs on Annie without a fight, then we will dress Charley up." Deal! |
Switching gears to the flip side of Annie, we have been struggling with her pronunciation
of words. Her vocabulary is growing and the
people who are around her every day can understand her but it is apparent that
speech is a little behind compared to others in her daycare class. We think it may be linked to her
hearing. Late 2015, she had several ear
infections back to back, twice rupturing her ear drums with no symptoms in
advance. In January she had a set of ear
tubes put in. In February at her follow
up, she didn’t pass her hearing test.
The doctor wasn’t too concerned as she passed her newborn hearing
screening so he asked that we come back in 6 months for a re-check. At 6 months, her hearing test was inconclusive and one of the tubes had fallen out of place so we had a second round for
replacement tubes. Following that
surgery, her hearing exam still remains inconclusive. I know she is hearing as she can respond to questions
with specific answers when I ask them in a whisper, but we do think her hearing might be muffled some. We recently
have been connected with a speech pathologist and are scheduling an in-depth hearing exam to determine if she is hearing fine or if the tubes are
interfering with the test results, as her doctor suspects that is the case.
Hoping
this speech therapy will help make some progress for her.
On the plus side, she is an awesome big sister, helping out
with Claire, always asking if she can hold her rather than just grabbing
her. Just very gentle overall. Almost 6 months in and I’ve seen very little
jealousy, in fact she enjoys having Claire around. I’m looking forward to when they can interact
more, I know sibling fighting is inevitable but Annie really enjoys interacting
with Claire so I’m looking forward to more of that.
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| sisterly love |
Annie is pretty smart, I’m sure every parent thinks their
kid is smart and I’m no exception. She
can whip together 24 piece puzzles easily, sings her ABCs (although she does
start to trail off around H and the annunciation is fuzzy but usually does
eventually get to Z), knows all of her colors and most of her shapes and is especially good at problem solving.
It’s really an amazing thing to sit and watch her little mind work.
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| Picture from daycare of how happy she was that she lined up and sorted her snack just the way she liked |
Although we like to call Annie our dictator, she’s has many sweet 2 year-old moments and she's probably a fairly typical 2 year old (although I think she
is a little more picky/particular than most).
She just has her ways of being quite demanding and a totally exhausting.
She keeps life eventful, fun and interesting. Having a 33 inch tall dictator in our house
isn’t so bad when we love her to pieces and pieces. I have a feeling she is always going to be
trying to run the show and this is only the start. Let's face it, we are just approaching the phase termed "threenagers," let the real fun begin...
