I Carry You- A Day with a Toddler

6:00 am is too early for a two-year-old to wake up. At least, that’s what my I tell myself for the hundredth day in a row as I roll out of bed to answer the cries from the other room. And so, our day begins before the sun is finished rising.

We work through the morning routine, starting with cuddles, then on to picking clothes, brushing teeth, and fixing hair. It takes half an hour to get those three things done.

“Time to change clothes,” I say.

As soon as I sit down with a Frozen outfit in hand, she grins and runs to the other side of the room. I stand back up. Try to coax her into putting on a shirt. But she’s busy because there is a really cool pink chair that she has to try out. She grunts, frustrated that it doesn’t rock.

“If you get your shirt on, we can go eat breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” she asks. Her eyes are back on me.

I nod, oh-so-hopeful, until she goes back to trying to rock that chair. I eventually wrestle a shirt on her. She brushes her own teeth this morning, which means I just let her suck the toddler toothpaste off the brush. She cries when I brush her matted nighttime curls and pull them back into hairbands but is laughing again within seconds. Laughing with curly pigtails and sparkly bows in her hair. My heart melts all over again.

It stops melting when we get to the stairs. Our pace is an average of three minutes per step. There are sixteen steps. I know this because she used to go down faster if we counted them. Counting is no longer interesting, nor are my other methods of getting. Down. The. Stairs.

“Come on!” I say in my most cheerful morning voice. “We have to go downstairs so we can eat! Do you want cereal?”

“No.”

“Do you want eggs?”

“No!”

“Milk?”

“No!”

“Fried apples?”

“Fied babbles!”

She hops down two stairs. Then “fied babbles” are no longer worth walking for. She looks up at me with those big, blue eyes.

“I carry you?”

I really try not to carry her everywhere, but we have been on these stairs way too long. I give in, pick her up, and finally get her to the kitchen.

I could describe the rest of our day, but it would be too repetitive. All our conversations follow the same pattern, with more whining in the mix the closer we get to naptime. She wants to be the one to throw the diaper in the trash can, but not to pick up her spoon after throwing it on the floor. She wants me to sit up in the play tent, not lay down. She wants me to play “Baa, baa, black sheep” and “itsy bitsy spider” simultaneously on the piano. She doesn’t want a  diaper change. Or a nap. When she does consent to a nap, she wants me to put the blankets on just right. It takes a while to achieve “just right.”

When she wakes up from naptime, sobbing because she tossed her teddy bear out of the crib, we begin again. More spurts of play intermixed with requests that I cannot fulfill, and expectations from both sides that we both fail to meet. The closer we get to dinner time, the longer it takes to accomplish any single task, and the more she begs me, “I carry you! I carry you!”

Except that I can’t carry her while cutting potatoes or cooking on the stove. I can’t hold her while writing emails to the insurance company or carrying the laundry up the stairs. I let her sit beside me, and she uses those way-too-pointy toddler elbows against my pregnant belly to push herself up. Then she changes her mind and bounces back onto my belly. Over and over again.

As I start dinner, she grabs me around the knees. Those big blue eyes are tearing up.

“I carry you?”

“Not right now, baby girl. I have to make dinner.”

“I carry you!”

“I know. But mommy is making dinner so we can eat.”

As if she cares.

“I carry you! I carry you!”

She throws herself on the floor at my feet.

She screams when her uncle or aunt try to carry her. She just wants me. Always just me.

A round of chocolate milk and a movie are in order, which occupies her for about fifteen minutes. Then she’s back at my feet to be held and cuddled. At least the food was in the oven, and I had a few minutes to carry her. So, I sat in a chair and held her on my lap. She got off my lap. Then back up. Down and up and down again. I am so tired of having another person touching, tugging, and sitting on me. I’m dreading the moment other family members arrive home, afraid that with my exhaustion and short temper I’ll snap.

I sigh, relieved, when the oven timer beeps, and I can set her back on the couch while finish dinner. I’m not a TV mom. Today I don’t care. I need her to watch this movie for at least a few minutes.

Dinner is finished and served. She pulls dishes out of the dishwasher faster than I can load it until I’m playing the toddler version of whack-a-mole with dirty spoons and bowls. I start to lose, so I plop her back on the couch in the other room.

The clock reads 7:00pm. Bedtime. Is it wrong to admit that I have been counting down the hours since naptime ended?

We relive our morning stairs experience in reverse, but without the promise of fried apples. We struggle through brushing teeth, and I floss between three or four of them. She fights me on flossing and it’s a “good enough” kind of night.

Then she sits on my lap as we pray together, folding her arms and burying her face in her teddy bear. I sing her favorite lullaby. She closes her eyes, long lashes resting on round, soft cheeks. I stroke her soft, curly hair and gently pull out the hairbands I fought to put in earlier that day. And I remember that through all the tears, tugging, and exhaustion, she’s perfect. She’s perfectly and beautifully mine, and I wouldn’t give that up for all the world.

I remember those perfect moments sprinkled throughout a long day. Eating popsicles on the swing. Shouting “choo-choo” while playing trains on the floor. My pride when she clears her plate without being asked. Her little determined walk like she’s always on an important mission. Piggyback rides and tickle fights. Little fingers pulling me out of a chair as she shouts, “Mama, dance! Mama, dance!” Laughing together as we spin and get dizzy to a song she’s making up. The sweetest little hugs and kisses. Those moments when she looks up just to smile at me because I’m still her favorite person in the whole world. No wonder she wants to sit on my lap and only carry me.

I adjust her blankets until she approves, turn on the night light, and close the door. I have time to myself, to do whatever I want to do now. But for some reason, all I want is to do is pull her into my lap and carry her a little longer.