Dear World, LOOK AT ME! Love, Bee

There’s just something about Bee lately. She’s changed.

There’s this thing that toddlers do; they go along exploring the world by rote for months (and sometimes years), hitting milestone after milestone, and then they realize they don’t have to just learn how to do something, they can do it their way. They develop a personality. That’s not quite what’s happened to Bee – she’s had an abundance of personality for awhile now. But all of a sudden, it’s like my mischievous little goofball has decided she’s done being a toddler and has decided to be a full-blown little kid.

For instance: Bee isn’t just talking in easy-peasy three or four word sentences. She is developing sentence structure (that far exceeds her ability to enunciate words, but she’ll get there) and flow of conversation (once she’s finished telling you over the phone what she wanted to say, she’ll speak gobbledy-gook in paragraphs – but really fast – and then finish with, “Well, okay, I love you, bye”). Her favorite adjectives are “super-” and “almost” as in, “Is it super-late and we have to go nuh-night?” and “Is it almost dark?” Note that my little Bee-baby is still lurking somewhere inside this new-Bee’s mind – her questions are usually about when she has to go to bed, whether she can wake up already, and how soon can she eat. But she’s relating her Bee-baby desires to this brand-new little-kid-Bee world in a whole stylish way. It’s like she was saving up her points and upgraded to a whole new pizazz-filled persona overnight.

Bee’s changed in another way, and while I’m digging the new communciations skills and vocabulary, I think this part might be my favorite: Bee is all of a sudden full of love and empathy. This little creature – this two-and-a-half-year-old – will hold a baby doll on her hip, cradle her other hand against its head or back, and jiggle the baby while “shhhing” it. I can describe her actions but can’t quite capture the tenderness that Bee pours into every motion. She handles her babies with more grace than I’ve seen some grown-ups use.

And it’s not just compassion for playing and pretending or for those smaller than she. Bee will pat her sister’s back if she’s crying, gently assuring her, “It okay, Moww-y! It’s okay…” The inflection the kid uses melts my heart every time. The other day she was examining my shoulders (her new obsession: everyone’s shoulders and how we can shrug them) and she asked: “Boo boo? ‘squito bites bite you?” Then she turned around before I could answer and scolded the invisible mosquitos. “No, no! Go away or moosh you dead!” And then she kissed my “boo boo.” “All better?” she asked? A freckle never had such sweet attention.

Yes, my Bee baby is still here. She sits on my lap now for minutes on end when she wakes up. I sit and rock her back and forth just like my mom used to do for me. It makes me feel like I’m a little girl again, in my mom’s arms, so achingly familiar are the motions. I love her all the more for bringing those feelings to mind. And really, I enjoy the balance. Because I know any minute Bee is going to spring from my lap and, in the middle of the afternoon, tell me she’s going to go find the sneaky elephant who is hiding before it gets almost-super-dark.

Oh, these crazy little super-sweet kiddos of mine. I wish I could bottle up these moments so I could remember what they were like when they go and change their perfect little selves all over again.

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Tags: children, growing up, kids, Life