Cleaning my room consisted mostly of putting clothes away, as I tend to be the type of person who lives out of laundry baskets for months on end before putting away clothes. I have just lately been getting into the habit of cleaning the downstairs of my apartment pretty regularly and wanted to tackle the upstairs also - my room and Squido's room is up there, plus a half bath in my bedroom. Since I moved in, which was oh, three months ago now, I haven't technically cleaned my room. There were clothes in laundry baskets, books still in bags and boxes that needed to be put on the shelves, and two bags of miscellany clothes that I still haven't tackled yet, sitting in a corner. The fact that I haven't touched these two garbage bags full of clothes in the three months that I've lived here leads me to believe I could tie them up and throw them in the nearest Salvation Army bin without a second thought - because obviously if I have gone that long without looking at them, I don't really need them. However, they still sit there, those two darn bags, because I have such a hard time giving things up.
So anyway, Squido and I were up there for probably an hour and a half tonight in the sweltering heat of the upstairs - don't you hate that? And, um, she didn't really help all that much.
I don't know why people use the term "terrible twos" when referring to toddler sized children. From what I recall, there was nothing terrible about the twos. Nothing at all. Squido was at her most adorable, most sweet, most loving and cuddly from two to three years old. I swear, on the very day of her third birthday, she changed into a completely different kid. Suddenly she has attitude! Opinions! Feelings! Things were so much simpler at age two, when she wasn't potty training, when she wasn't using the word "NO" every five minutes, when she she wasn't WHINING ALL THE TIME!
I asked a lady, a lady at work who is turning out to be a great friend of mine (Don't know about her, but I sure consider her a friend and not just an associate at work) whether it gets easier as kids get older. She has four kids of her own, three boys and a girl, all of them in their late teens/early twenties, and she said: "No. It gets harder." And I thought to myself, my god, how can this get harder? I'm at the end of my rope sometimes, sometimes I just weep because I feel like I can't handle this mothering job, that I am so afraid I am going to horribly screw her up, like I am never going to get a handle on how to make a child happy so that they don't scream, fight, hit, and disobey?
Please don't think I have a bratty child, though. Squido definintely has her moments, and it just seems to me that those moments are coming a lot more frequently lately now that she has such an expanding vocabulary, she comes home learning new words and phrases every day. For instance, today while we were cleaning she used the word "stupid" correctly in a complex sentence. I was putting some books away, when I heard her start crying in her room. I could tell right away that it wasn't an "I'm hurt!" cry, it was more of a "I'm so pissed off at the world right now, RIGHT IN THIS MOMENT, that I have to make this noise! I HAVE TO!" kind of cry. And then she whined: "This stupid cat won't get out of my room, mommy!!!" That would be Elmer. A moment later she came trudging into the room with all 15lbs of Elmer clutched in her arms, and dropped him on my floor, turned around in a huff, went in her room, and slammed the door.
So I said to my friend at work, "Why?? Why doesn't get easier?" and she said, "Because then the kids become teenagers."
O.M.G.
Here's a picture of Elmer:
Can you tell there, that his tongue is sticking out of his mouth a little bit? That's because he has a snaggletooth, which I will try to get a good shot of soon. And the snaggletooth, that's because he got bit in the face by a big dog when he was a little kitten. My poor, big, dumb Elmer.
