Today, Lucy is two years old.

She’s been walking around the house this morning, repeating, “Ha’ buffday, Cici!” (Yes, she still calls herself Cici. I kind of hope she never stops.)

I got cookies for her class at daycare. Her little classmate saw them and started yelling, “My cookies!” Lucy just looked at him coolly and said, “MY buffday.” Like, step off mah cookies, yo. (Gotta say I can totally relate to that feeling.)

If you ask her how old she is, she holds up her entire hand and says, “I TWO!”

She is hilarious and amazing and exhausting and a complete and utter terror. She is so much like me that it freaks me out. Her stubborn streak, her need to sleep with a million stuffed animals all around her like I did when I was little, the way she wants to do everything herself (both “I do it!” and “no help!” are in heavy rotation in her vocabulary). I already worry about how we’ll butt heads when she’s older because we’re so much alike. But she is utterly fantastic.

The other milestone is that today is Catie’s last day of kindergarten.

First day of kindergarten:

Last day of kindergarten:

Her school had an end-of-school pizza party where the kids did a little performance for all the parents, which was really sweet and funny.

(You probably don’t really want to watch a video of my kid singing “First Grade, First Grade,” to the tune of “New York, New York,” but I filmed it anyway because I knew my parents would want to see it.)

And you know, I guess it should feel weird to say that I now have a 2 year-old and a first grader. But for some reason it hasn’t really fazed me at all.

So many people I know get nostalgic about every single one of their child’s milestones, and I see so many of them say things like, where did the time go, they grew up so fast, things like that. I kind of understand that in a way, but I don’t feel that way at all. I mean, sure, I tell Catie that I’m going to tie a brick to her head to weigh her down and make her stop growing, but that’s because she keeps outgrowing her clothes, not because I think she’s getting too grown up.

Instead, with every milestone, I feel like I can let my breath out a little bit. Like, ok, we survived that part. Now let’s get through this next bit. Parenting to me feels like a marathon that I’m running, which is full of hills. I survived Lucy’s first two years. There’s a hill. I got Catie through kindergarten. There’s another hill.

And I know – I KNOW – that I should stop and savor them while they’re so little, because time is fleeting. I get that. But at the same time? Toddlers are JERKS, man. I honestly just want a fast-forward button to get me through Lucy’s next two years. Terrible twos are rough, and I seem to recall that three year-olds are even worse. Four was a good age. You can (try to) reason with a four year-old. They’re generally potty-trained, sleep through the night, and are somewhat self-sufficient. Can’t we just skip ahead to four? Has anyone figured out that technology yet?

Although, I admit that there I do like comparing pictures from last year to now. If nothing else, there is quite a significant change in Lucy’s hair. Like WHOA.

So, maybe I’m not nostalgic about it. That’s ok. But I do have a pretty awesome two year-old and a completely fantastic first grader. And for that, I’m thankful.

They’re pretty cute too.

Oh, my poor little neglected blog. I have so many moments of things where I think, “I should blog about that,” but then I either forget it or I can’t come up with a way to capture it in an interesting storytelling format. Which sort of feels like the whole point of blogging, right?

Stuff like:
* Catie’s favorite candy right now is what she calls “Reese’s penis butter cups.” And every time she says it, I have to cover my face with both hands and leave the room so I can laugh where she can’t see me.

* Catie also told me that you have to take an airplane to get to South Carolina and that the people there speak another language. After much confusion, it appears that she thinks the words “Carolina” and “America” are interchangeable.

(And yeah, I guess they kind of do speak another language in certain parts of South Carolina. So she wasn’t totally wrong.)

* I don’t know if I’ve ever mentioned this, but Lucy cannot say that “Lu” part of her name, so she calls herself Cici. Which means that now we call her Cici most of the time. It’s kind of adorable and perfect for her.

* I got a notice in the mail about signing Catie up for a local beauty pageant. I laughed maniacally before tossing it in the trash. Do what you want to do, I guess, but I will never, ever be a pageant mom. And I cannot imagine my little nerdy tomboy child would ever go along with the fancy dress and big hair and all that. Unless you can count “playing games on the iPad” as a talent, because she would smoke the competition in that category.

* I’ve been dating quite a bit. It’s fun. It’s nice to have guys that make you feel pretty.

* My mom and I took the girls to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live a few weeks ago. And we (Catie, Lucy, and I) got down into the toddler mosh pit in front and we high-fived DJ Lance. This is what qualifies as a really awesome moment in my life. Don’t judge.

* Dave is in town for the next week or so, and occasionally he has to text me phonetic words to help him translate Lucy-speak to English.

Example:
Him: What does ‘Oo-oo’ mean?
Me: It means dog. That’s how she says ‘woof woof.’

I mean, duh. Obviously. How could anyone not know that?

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So, see, most of that stuff ends up condensed as a tweet or a Facebook status update, and then I don’t really come here to expand on things. Even though I want to. And I miss it. I’ve also been bad about answering friends’ emails for the same reason. Taking the time to sit down and string more than two sentences together feels like too much work.

And really, the reason it feels like so much work? Is because I am TIIIIIIRED. Because Lucy still isn’t sleeping. A lot of the sleep coach’s ideas were really good, but most of them are not things that I’ve been able to implement.

For example, she said that Lucy needs to be in bed no later than 7 to 7:30 p.m. Well, I don’t even get the kids from daycare until 6:00, and then I either have to cook dinner and feed them, or we go to my parents’ house for dinner, but either way, usually we’re only just getting into the bath by 7:30. If I get her to bed by 8:30, I feel like I’m doing really well.

Also, the reward chart? Lucy does not understand that at all yet. So that didn’t work.

And the baby gate in her doorway? Since this is a rental house, I had to use a pressure-mounted gate because I can’t screw one into the doorposts, and it took her less than 30 seconds to figure out how to go all “LUCY SMASH!” on it, knock it over, and then walk out of her room like nothing happened.

She looks cute during the daytime, I know. Trust me, this face is not cute at 3 a.m.

One of my own personal theories about Lucy’s sleep habits is that she simply doesn’t like being alone. When Dave is in town, she and Catie sleep together on a fold-out couch. And Lucy always sleeps through the night for him, without fail.

Dave said that he has seen Lucy wake up in the night. She sits up, looks around, sees him across the room and Catie right next to her, and then she lies down and goes back to sleep.

So, I’ve decided, the girls are going to start sharing a bedroom. Catie was dead-set against this idea when I first suggested it, but I’ve managed to bribe her into going along with it. (Promise that kid a new Skylander action figure and you can probably get her to do just about anything.)

Dave is going to help me re-arrange furniture this weekend to get their room set up. Is it weird to use my ex-husband for manual labor? Probably. Oh well. They’re his kids too, after all.

Wish me luck. Hopefully this will solve the constant wake-ups.

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** About the post title: this song by Of Monsters and Men?

I liked the song, until The Guy told me right around the time of our break-up that it reminded him of me. Now I hate it. Funny how that works.