Toddlerhood 2.0

God knew what he was doing when he put it on my heart to adopt.  He knows that I lack patience for some areas of parenting but find more joy in others.  While I know some mothers who LOVED pregnancy, I was not one of them; I think they must have been slipped something in their epidural to alter their memory.  The ONLY part of being pregnant that I enjoyed was the knowledge that our family was being blessed with a baby.  I could say the same thing about the infant stages.  I adore other people’s babies, but if I’m being honest, I’m just as happy to give them back after a while. 

But TODDLERHOOD… now there’s a different story.  Give me an 18-month-old, or a 2-year-old, or a 3-year-old any day!   I loved this stage of parenting.  While I sometimes heard other moms express frustrations about their child’s budding tantrums or stubbornness (and I’m sure I did on occasion too), I don’t remember a day of toddlerhood that I didn’t absolutely love.  I called it the “age of discovery”… where everything is new and exciting, and children can’t wait to try new things.  Yes, it often meant difficulties and temper tantrums.  But I loved every minute of it. 

In toddlerhood, you start to truly parent your child and have a different relationship with them.  You talk to them constantly, labeling everything you see and do so that they can learn the language.  You are constantly redirecting behaviors, doing so with lots of motions and short sentences that they can understand, like “Ouch!  Biting hurts Mommy!”  Toddlers speak to you with language you often can’t understand, but you’d better figure it out any way you can – sink or swim!  As their parent, you can interpret a toddler’s needs better than anyone… and let’s be honest, a toddler shows her appreciation for all your hard work more than an infant does, and that’s just nice.  Toddlers need toilet training.  You have to watch a toddler every moment because you just never know what they are going to do.  But their unpredictability can also make them hilarious; a toddler will make you laugh about things you’ve never laughed about before.  If I could have had my wish, we would have adopted a toddler. 

Guess what having an child who doesn’t speak the same language as me reminds me of???  After 4 days alone with our kids, I've decided that it reminds me of parenting a toddler. 

 

All those parenting skills you use with your toddler to improve their language, their social skills, their habits?  They are the same ones we are currently digging out of the long-forgotten corners of our parenting bag of tricks.   My kids and I can’t understand each other – it is now our 24/7 job to figure out their needs anyway.  Having less than ideal parenting early in life, and having lived in an institution for the past 2 years, I can’t just assume that they know anything that a 7-year-old and 9-year-old might normally know!  They need to be watched every second because they’re so unpredictable to us.  I can’t assume, for example, that my 7-year-old has the common sense to not touch the stove or run out into the street.  We use lots of gestures and repeat very short phrases to teach them not to do these things, just like you would with a toddler.  We find ourselves once again monitoring bathroom habits to make sure that everyone has indeed used toilet paper, flushed, and washed their hands with soap, and takes off their underwear when they shower!  There's a lot of old habits to undo, whenever the time is right.

I won't pretend that it isn't exhausting and sometimes frustrating... a toddler is at least smaller!  You can wrangle up and confine a toddler if you really need to.  And a toddler has usually been hearing you speak a common language for a while, and they usually understand much more of what we say than we give them credit for!  We don't have that advantage with Anya and Sasha.  I think we must spend 1/2 our day with our noses in a Russian dictionary.  And they are much bigger and stronger than toddlers - it's amazing the things they can get into. 
 

But OH MY GOODNESS, can they make us laugh!  I could write a whole separate blog entry about all the unpredictable and funny things that they have done that have, just like a toddler would do.  My most memorable in these past 4 days was when Anya figured out how to turn on the bidet in the bathroom.  Thank goodness I was in the room – I looked over to find her bending over, hair hanging into it, as if she was going to take a drink.  In my wildest parenting dreams, this is not a sentence I would have anticipated having to use in my parenting: “ANYA, NYET, THAT’S NOT A DRINKING FOUNTAIN, IT’S FOR WASHING YOUR BUTT!!!!!!!” 

 

Thank you God for you sense of humor, and for crafting me into the kind of parent who was made to find joy in this new, more intense version of “toddlerhood” that we are experiencing now!

 

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139:13-16 (NIV)