Kate: Month Thirty-Six

Dear Kate,

On Wednesday of last week, you turned thirty-six months old. Yes, three years old. While I’d like to say I can’t believe it, since you remind me about every half second, I’d be lying to claim that I hadn’t already gotten accustomed to the fact. In accordance with all clichés, I feel compelled to say “time goes by so fast” and “I can't believe how quickly you've grown.” In fact, I am so used to hearing those phrases, I came close to saying, “I can remember the moment you were born like it was yesterday.” Although, we’d all know that I was stretching it, since I was in a drug-induced sleep when they extracted you from my uterus, but we will save that story for another day and a few martinis later. As overused as those phrases all are, there truly is something about introducing children into your life that increases the time-machine, with days, hours, minutes, and seconds flying by at warp speed.



Leading up to your third birthday, you developed an attitude unrivaled by anything we had ever witnesses before. Believe me, we have witnessed our fair share. Claire, one of my blog readers, coined this phase the “Oh Dear God Threes.” My first reaction was to be very, very, very afraid of the Oh Dear God Threes. In fact, I was moments away from trying to conjure up way to see if you could just live at daycare for the next year. After a week of the Oh Dear God Threes, you came home from church and threw-up hot pink puke all over me for an entire afternoon. The next morning, you woke up, completely back to normal. Your normal borders on the Oh Boy God I Might Need Your Assistance Threes, but I’ve inherited special certification in that area through years one and two. Suffice to say, puking has never been such a welcomed activity. I hope you got the subliminal message that the Oh Dear God Threes should be saved until about a month prior to your 4th birthday.



You have contracted a serious case of Princess-itis over the course of this month. Disney has succeeded at ripping you out of our protective clutches that block stereotyping, gender-biases, and commercialization. Ariel, Snow White, and Beauty have taken up residence and crapped all over anything in this house bearing adult-friendly taste. So far, I’ve managed to win the battle of keeping you out of character-clothing. That would equate to a score of Mom (1) and Kate (1,298,345). In addition to Princess-mania, you’ve developed an irresistible desire to be a ballerina. While cute initially, it eventually morphed into a full-blown obsession that was growing impossible to ignore. For weeks, I pretended not to hear your ballerina shrieks, assuming that you’d quickly move onto the next obsession. I mean, if you have one consistency, it is your insane ability to not be consistent about anything.



However, the ballerina thing just wouldn’t die. One night, I walked in and caught you talking into my phone. All I heard was, “Uh, this is Kate. Puh-lease call me back. I want to be a ballerina.” Apparently since your mother was proving inept at navigating dance class enrollment, you decided to take manners into your own hands. The next week you attended your first Jazz-Nastics class. You call it your ballerina class and I don’t, but I am oh so very careful not to tell you it is NOT a ballerina class. However, you absolutely adore your class, so I am not sure it would even matter. You are the most attentive student, determined to always volunteer and be the star of the class. While cute at three, you’d better start working to contain that, or you’ll end up turning in to “that” kid. Believe me. That would, in turn, make me the parent of “that” kid, which isn't really how I roll.



As these months continue to fly by, I become more and more convinced that somehow we obtained different copies of the Life Instruction Manual. The one I’ve known for 29 years and the one you inherited at birth may, in fact, be written in different languages. I’ve read and re-read the chapter on How to Parent Your Spirited Toddler, while you have been reading How Toddlers Can Overtake the Universe and Parent Their Parents. I’ve learned quickly that since you turned three, you sincerely believe you are an adult. You are quite skilled at associating everything you do with being big and remind us on an ongoing basis than you are now a big kid. To illustrate my point, I recently said to you, “Kate, are you having a spaz attack?” Without missing a beat, you replied, “No, I’m having a BIG GIRL spaz attack.” Ah, big girl spaz attacks, I can relate. I suffer from the same affliction occasionally.



My big, big girl, I cannot envision life without you.

Love,
Mama