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My Two Year Old is Mean Girling Me and I Can't Handle It









My daughter is right smack dab in the center of being two and she knows it. She's learning and growing so much every day, saying new phrases and performing fantastical physical feats that just a month ago seemed impossible. She impresses the shit out of us all the time with all her new abilities, and she's pretty damn awesome.

With the exception of this one new thing she's also started doing, which is mean girl-ing her mom on the reg. And it sucks.

What is she doing? you may be asking yourself. Is she going through your high school journal and mocking your heart felt poetry that you scribbled after a hard break up with a guy whose name you can't recall these days?  Is she tormenting you by secretly calling up all your prospective employers anonymously and telling them you have a drug problem just to fuck with you and keep you in a lower income bracket? Is she slowly poisoning your food with arsenic so that you remain in a sickly state just so she can convince you that you need her to care for her?
No, nope and Jesus! No, she's not Munchhausen-ing me!

Then what in the name of all things good and Holy is this girl doing to make you feel so bad?

She doesn't need me as much as she did once and I hate it. Plus she purposefully leaves me out of stuff! Like sometimes at bedtime she refuses to let me read her books and only wants her Daddy to do it. Other times she screams when I want to get her dressed and when I sing what used to be her favorite songs she yells "Stop!" She slaps my hand away when I'm rubbing her hair or stroking her cheek. Other times when Daddy isn't here she just cries and calls out for him in a way that makes me think being with only me is such an arduous task that she just can't deal.

Yes, I know. It sounds super lame, but tell that to my heart, which breaks every time.

Now I'm aware that she isn't cognizant of what she's doing.  The only thing she knows is that she's getting some sort of a reaction, which is her intention, but she doesn't know that it's affecting me as much as it is, because if she did I'd like to think that she wouldn't do these things anymore. I mean, I hope she wouldn't anyway! There's a slight chance that she's just an asshole, or a sociopath in the vein of We Need To Talk About Kevin. But since she's pretty rad a majority of the time I'm going to take a gamble on that she's not doing this on purpose.

I also know that it's fully my job to keep my shit together and not let a 30 pound toddler drive me to "take to my bed" because she doesn't want me to read to her. That's insane, and I get it. My "excuse" is that I'm 28 weeks pregnant and a little off my hormonal rocker. That's what I tell people anyway. What it feels like in my heart is that my daughter doesn't love me, doesn't want me around and thinks I'm useless and stupid, that I shouldn't even try anymore and I just need to fuck off in general. Even reading that sentence makes me feel so silly, but sadly those feelings are real in the moment.

As I write this I wonder if this is a common feeling amongst other mommy's, and how they handle it. I did share what's been going on to another mommy friend of mine who also has a little girl. Her daughter is a bit younger, but she acknowledged that she was worried about this happening too at some point. "Doesn't she know I love her the most?" she said over text. And I was all, yeah, right?!  Like, what the hell, ladies? We're your mom! We would do literally anything for you! Take a bullet, walk through hot coals, let Steve Bannon's swollen liver give us a foot massage, anything! Plus, um, are you even aware of what a mess my vagina is? It's a war zone down there! Honestly I even can't recognize it anymore, and if it mugged me in the subway I couldn't pick it out of a line up.  And guess what? I regret nothing! I wouldn't trade my busted vag if it meant I had to lose even a single moment with you.

I know that in the long run her figuring out her independence and speaking her mind is such a great thing. I want a kick ass daughter who takes no shit from anyone. It's just...what about me? I thought I had a long time before my kid is rolling her eyes at my jokes and texting her friends about how annoying I am. The way things are going I have three years, tops, before she's secretly calling me a bitch to her buddies. Oh my damn heart can't take it!!

For now I am just going to try to be more understanding and take my personal insanity down by several notches. A thought that keeps me going in all this is knowing that (if she chooses) one day she will have a strong, bad ass little girl of her own who tells her to stop singing, pushes her away when she goes in for a hug every now and then, and only wants her Daddy. And at that moment she too will feel like utter shit about it, which makes me feel a whole lot better.


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