A Phase of Opposition

Nathan didn't want to pose for a photograph on Easter morning.  "Stand up straight?  How dare you ask me to do that."

My sweet little boy has entered a phase of opposition.  This once easy-going baby with a super-pleasant demeanor—often called good-natured by our family doctor—is becoming an obstinate little boy with a terrible shriek to his voice that just started yesterday. 

He’s becoming less a baby and more of a “real boy,” but is somehow still managing to be both at the same time.  He’s not able to communicate exactly what he wants, but he definitely knows what he wants—and he seems to always want the things he can’t have and at times that are terribly inconvenient or just not possible.  And parenting is…getting harder.  Just when you think things are getting easier, you realize that really, they’re just not.

He’s not even two yet, and although he’s not terrible, I fear that we’re getting there faster than I expected.  (Really, I was hoping to avoid the terrible twos altogether, but alas.)  The suddenness of this change is what’s scaring me a little bit—I’m just not ready.  Where did my sweet, amicable little baby go? 

Nathan at four months.  How I miss those days.  Although it could be a misperception, looking back, things seemed so much easier then.  But I know that some things were really much harder, like sleeping at night or nursing every two hours during the day.  It was exhausting, so I wonder why it looks so easy now.  Maybe it's a trick to make women want to have more than one child.  Or maybe now things are just a different kind of difficult.