Thirty-One Months

This month brought a fantastic milestone moment for Punky: she learned to pedal her tricycle!  And she is so proud!  Now we just need to tweak her steering.  She has left down pat; right and straight are proving difficult.  I suppose she'll figure it out eventually when she tires of going in circles. 

And she had another milestone moment that was far less than fantastic and truly caught me off guard.  Many people told me the day would come, but I really thought it would never happen.  Not with my kid.  Not with my sweet, loving, clingy little girl.  But it happened yesterday.  When I went to pick her up at daycare, she was playing with blocks with one of her teachers.  She took one look at me and yelled, "No! I don't want to go home, Mommy! I want to stay at school and play!"  Then she burst into tears and ran in the opposite direction from her stunned, heartbroken, devastated mother. 

I had no clue what to do.  Normally daycare pick-up goes off like a scene from a movie:  I walk in, she sees me and chirps an excited "Hi, Mommy!" as she runs to me at top speed.  She jumps into arms, I give her the biggest hug and kiss.  I tell her I missed her so much, and she tells me she missed me, too.  Then she asks, "Can we go home now, Mommy?"  A picture-perfect moment indeed. 

Yesterday I just stood there with my mouth open and watched the tantrum unfold before me.  The message was clear: she wanted to stay at school.  Of course, my brain immediately twisted that message into something like this:  She doesn't want to go home.  She hates her home.  She wants to stay with someone else.  She hates her mommy.  She's happier at school.  Her mommy sucks. 

I ended up having to carry her out while she continued to cry and whine.  The crying stopped by the time I buckled her car seat.  The whining was over by the next stop sign.  By the time we pulled in the driveway three minutes later, order was restored in the universe.  I got a big hug when we got out of the car, followed by a kiss and a sweet, "I missed you today, Mommy!"  Crisis averted, but those ten minutes were pure torture. 

In other news, the potty train is still stuck at the station.  The new "music plays when you pee" potty went over about as well as a new stove would in the eyes of a two-year-old.  For the most part, she could care less.  In the past month she peed in it twice, once for me and once for her dad.  She did, however, announce to everyone in the produce department at Walmart that she needed to pee in the potty and insisted I take her to the bathroom. 

I decided to humor her, and appease the crowd, by going through the motions.  Off to the bathroom we went.  She picked a stall.  I pulled her shorts down and removed her diaper.  I lifted her tiny hiney onto the toilet.  With no potty seat available, she had to hold on to the sides to avoid falling in the hole.  While I watched her swinging legs and thought about the gallon of sanitizer I would need to use on her hands afterward, a funny thing happened.  She peed.  And not just a tiny tinkle, a long bladder-emptying pee.  Of course I was absolutely thrilled and nearly peed myself dancing around the bathroom and praising her up and down. 

For the rest of our shopping trip, no one was safe from Punky's big news.  She told everyone who even slightly glanced her way that she peed in the potty at Walmart.  And that she used toilet paper.  And that she flushed it all by herself.  And that she washed her hands with the blue soap in the bathroom.  And that Mommy is so proud of her.  She's nothing if not thorough.  

I even went as far as to buy her training pants.  I put a pair on her and explained that they would feel cold if she peed.  I encouraged her to keep them dry and tell me if she needed to use the potty.  Six hours, two juice boxes, half a bottle of water, and a cup of milk later, the training pants were still dry.  But she hadn't asked to use the potty either.  And it was bedtime.  Apparently she chose to simply hold it rather than face a cold tush or a few minutes on the potty.  I made her try the potty before starting the bedtime routine but all she did was sit there and stare at me.  Two minutes after changing her into pajamas and a diaper, she peed.  

Ugh.