"Hi-lo? Oh!, Oh-tay! Bye-bye. Here Daddy, Daddy!" She passes her little plastic phone from her ear to Daddy's. Daddy pretends to talk on the phone, too, but by then she's off to something else. She's pushing her little people mini-van around.
"Car! Skooo. Bear, skooo." Pretending all the little figures on off and on their way to school, a concept I'm not even sure how she learned. Then her attention is drawn to a poster high on the wall.
"M'Up, Daddy, up!" Daddy picks her up and she points to each letter on the poster.
"E! M! B! ABCD, Oh yes. All done!" He sets her down.
"No, Daddy. Up, up! ABCD!" He picks her back up. "All done. Down."
And so it goes. All afternoon. Up. Down. Mo' SIT DOWN! P'ay! Me, me, MEEEEEEEEEEE!

She climbs up into my lap, insistant on my attention.
"Hi, Mommy! Hi." She sits herself on top of the laptop. "Mo' p'ay, Mommy. Peeees?" Then she's down, and a sneaky little finger snakes up and punches the power button on the laptop before I can stop her. Well. That's one way to get my attention. Then she's dancing and singing, being unbelievably adorable, making me smile and wonder, for the 40th time today, how I was blessed with this perfect little girl.

The scene changes as suddenly as lightening, though. I notice she has a dirty diaper. "Come, on, Baby Girl, let's go change that icky diaper."
"No, no, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" And she's off and running. She's quick, too. She runs around the circle of the living room, dining room, kitchen. I head her off at the pass and catch her. She yells at me all the way up the stairs. Sometimes she willingly climbs up the stairs, sometimes it's like this.
We get to the changing table. I wrestle her pants off.
"No! Mommy, no diap!" I tell her that little girls who don't want to wear diapers need to learn to use the potty. We haven't actually tried this yet, but we're working up to it. She sings, "Paah-teee, paah-tee!" I try to talk up how exciting and "big-girl" it is to use the potty.
This scene would be funny, in a sit-com kinda way, if I weren't scared of a repeat of last night. Last night was no good. John was changing her diaper last night, getting her ready for a bath. She was in one of her "Me, me, me, memememeeeeeeeeeeee!" moods and yanked the diaper off her own tush. A very dirty diaper. Let's just say, it was providential that she was headed into the bath. Otherwise, she would have been anyway. Poop. Everywhere. On her head. Hands, legs, on Daddy. No, we don't want a repeat of last night.
I get a clean diaper on her little body and then. Oh, and then. The moment I have really been dreading. Pulling her pants back on. The last few weeks, there has been a Toddler-Monster lurking under the surface, jumping out at the most inopportune times, especially whenever she's getting dressed. And then it happens.
"Me!!! Mememememememeeeeeee, Mommy! No, me!!!"
"Ok, ok. You can try to put your pants on all by yourself, Chicaboo. Go ahead." I say this in very soothing tones. It doesn't work. For whatever arguement is going on in her little head is still being waged. She doesn't seem to get that I gave in.
"MEMEMEMEME! Gi'a do! No, Mommy. No! MEME, Gi'a self!" She is red in the face, screaming at me, wriggling and throwing her body around the table. Possessed. I try to calm her, let her know she can do it herself.
Eventually, I get a little irritated, I'll admit it. I use the "Stern Mommy Voice." She's crying. Real tears. Still red and screaming.
Eventually, I lift her from the table, legs kicking out at me, at nothing, and we go sit in the hall. Time Out.
We sit as she continues to yell at me. I talk in soothing tones.
"I know you want to do it yourself, Chicaboo. I know it's hard to be almost two. Sometimes you just need a little bit of help. It's ok to let Mommy and Daddy help. We can do it together."
She calms down a little bit. I take her back into her bedroom and lay her down. I hand her the pants and she struggles for a few minutes trying to get them over her feet. Still sobbing, but quietly. Those little jagged breaths that break my heart. She hands the pants to me. "Mommy? He'p, peees?"

Our days are variations on this theme. She wants undivided attention. We are conjoled and commanded to play with her, no matter what we are in the middle of. Most of the time, I happily oblige because I love playing "skooo bus" for the 1376th time. But, eventually, dinner does have to be made, a bath does have to be had, a diaper (shudder!) does need to be changed. And then, that unpredictable Toddler-Monster is upon us.
She's cute and unbelievable smart. She started counting 1-10 in Spanish the other day. Out of the blue. (Thanks, Dora, and Sesame Street!) But that temper! It is unbelievable how much fight she has in that little body!
Her father looked at me the other night, as she came down the stairs, pants in her hand, face red and tear-streaked. "I don't like this at all," he said. "I don't like this 'me, mine' stuff at all."
"She's almost two," I said. That's all I could say. "She's almost two."