Spoiled Only Child

Dear Mia,

I just went back and read some of my old letters, and wow, have things gotten easier. No wonder I sometimes feel a bit lost in the vast of the expanse of the weekends these days, wondering what I'm supposed to be doing with myself. I think it's because I spent more than three years dealing with your constant needs and, now, all of a sudden, you seem to know how to do everything by yourself. Gone are the days when you refused to do things for yourself. Now, you insist on it. You would sooner drag a 50-pound chair down the stairs, so you can stand on it to reach the light switch, than have me turn on the light for you. If I did flip the switch, you would demand that I turn it off immediately so you could do it yourself. 

Now, I park the car and, seconds later, you have taken off your own seatbelt, opened the door and jumped out. After all those years of leaning over to unstrap you, it feels like a miracle. You clear your own dishes from the table and wash your hands without help and deal with your own potty needs. And you dress yourself with no intervention from me. You are adamant about choosing your own clothes. In fact, anything I might suggest you wear is rejected on principle. You have very strict wardrobe requirements. Stretch pants only. Anything even the slightest bit scratchy or tight is rejected. Turtlenecks are out of the question. You have not yet come to understand the concept of matching, so you make some interesting fashion statements. Some days, I wish I could pin a sign on you that reads, "She picked this outfit, not me."

These days, you seem to need me most as a social director. Ever since our beach vacation, when you spent the week happily playing with other children, you have made constant requests for playmates. "Can I go to XXXX's house?" you ask, hopefully. You don't understand the dynamics of invitations and childcare trades. So I spend my weekends trying to navigate those trades. It is a lot of pressure, but I manage to find a playmate for you almost every weekend. This is probably one of my least favorite things about parenting right now, but I do it because I love you. And because if I don't, you will hound me all weekend to watch movies.

So much for my dreams of a child who prefers spinach salad to candy, who doesn't know who the Disney princesses are. You have become a glutton for dessert and movies. You pick at your dinner and then devour huge bowls of ice cream. If I would let you, you would sit and watch movies all day long. But, despite it all, you seem to be turning out OK.  You are joyful and adventuresome and affectionate. You love to play games and dance with me in the living room. You love to laugh. You love camping and hiking and sailing and swimming and being outside. You are game for just about anything. And you can find fun absolutely anywhere. A few weeks ago we took you to a party, and when we arrived, we realized you were the only kid. A bunch of adults were standing around talking and sipping drinks, and my heart sank, thinking you would be miserable and we would have to make a quick exit. But before long, you disappeared. I realized you had introduced yourself to a group of people sitting on the deck. You were telling them stories about our vacations. You served cookies to most of the guests, shoving them into their hands whether they wanted them or not. You danced to the music. When we told you it was time to go, you begged to stay longer--and I am sure that many of the guests were sad to see you go. 

In a world that often feels scary and hard, you are my shining light of happiness. 

Love,

Mommy

Dear Mia,

Tonight, after finishing dinner, your dad and I were lingering at the table over glasses of wine. We could hear you playing in the next room, talking to your babies and busily plotting your next move. Your dad said, "I think she's a happy child." And just at that moment, you came out of your playroom naked, marching and beating a toy drum in your own personal parade. If my whole life was leading up to this moment, it is enough.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Mia,

When I was pregnant with you, I was terrified of the ways you would change my life. I remember sitting at lunch with my boss, talking about my fears. "I will never get to be alone with my husband again," I said, imagining an unwanted intruder. And I will always remember how he, a father of two girls, responded, because they were the wisest words I have ever heard about parenthood. Having a child, he said, is like falling in love again. What you lose in intimacy with your spouse, you gain 100 times over in the love affair you have with your child. The truth in those words nearly makes me cry.

I never imagined how much I could love you, how much I would want to share my life with you. I love the curve of your belly and the sheen of your dark hair. I love the joy in your face when you smile, and the sound of your voice squealing "Mommy!" as I arrive home from work. A few minutes ago, I heard you get out of bed and tromp to the bathroom, and I loved the sound of of your feet hitting the floor, even the sound of you peeing. I love that you are alive, running and laughing and sleeping and eating in my house. I don't know how I ever lived without this kind of love.

I love all your adorable mispronunciations. You cannot pronounce the sound "th," and so mother becomes "muller," weather becomes "weller." I love that, in our house, a place that is very dark is called "fardark." I love the way so many of your sentences start with the word actually ("Ack-sha-lee, I really know how to put on my own clothes."), and the way so many end with ... or something ("or sumsin'"). I even love the hint of teenage churlishness in your new question, "Why do you always ... ?" I love the way you tell me, "I love you, Mommy," dozens of times a day.

This past weekend, you miraculously learned to swim. After being terrified of putting your head under water or swimming without a floatie, you suddenly yanked that thing off and started going for it. As I watched you kicking and paddling, your whole body jerking side to side with the effort, your dark hair plastered to the top of your head, I was almost overwhelmed with love and pride. I went to a meditation retreat a few months ago, and at the end, our teacher chanted one phrase over and over: "All I ask of you, is to remember me, for loving you." That is all I ask of you, Mia. If you remember only one thing about your childhood, remember how much you were loved.

Love,

Mommy

Dear Mia,

I kept hearing that three was worse than two, but I didn't want to believe it. I kept telling myself, "No, no, no. We got all that over with in the twos. Three is going to be great!" I can now say that three is at least as bad as two. Bad is, of course, a relative term. You are still a mostly wonderful little bundle of life and love and joy. But you have also forced me to accept that at least some portion of each day is going to be spent locked in battle over, say, getting your shoes on, or getting your shirt on, or getting your pants on, or getting your underwear on, or getting your teeth brushed, or getting you out of the bathtub, or getting you in the bathtub, or... Maybe you see what I'm trying to say.

You have developed a fairly consistent policy, which is that you will do what we ask only after making it as difficult as possible and trying, with every tool you have, to force us to do it for you. You don't like to pull up your own pants, or put on your own shoes, or step out of the bathtub. This is not because you are incapable of doing these things on your own, but because you want to prove that you have the power to make us do them for you. I have recently developed a reward system, in which you get a sticker each morning and each evening if you are able to get dressed/bathed/fed without a screaming, rolling-on-the-floor meltdown. It is helping somewhat, because you really want those stickers. But now the sticker itself has turned into a battleground. You don't even want to hear about the night that I denied you your sticker. Let's just say that the neighbors a few blocks away knew you didn't get your sticker that night. I don't understand why you need to create so much struggle. Why can't you just put on your shoes and have a happy morning? Why do the littlest things have to be so difficult?

But I am not here just to complain about you. We had a conference with your preschool teachers the other day, and I want you to know what they said. They said you are expressive and advanced with your vocabulary, your writing, your imagination, most everything. And they described you as a bright and charismatic leader. You are the one who makes up games on the playground and assigns each child a role — and your ideas are so good that they actually listen to you. They said your only meltdowns come when the other children aren't properly following your instructions. Sometimes, they say, you take your power so far that you single out two or three children and assign them to be your playmates — as if you are some sort of preschool kingmaker. They say you are enthusiastic and open to virtually everything they do. Guess what their one concern was? You don't follow instructions.

In many ways, this conference confirmed what I already knew about you. You are assertive (some would say bossy), strong-willed, imaginative, smart and open to new experiences. But I really had no idea you were becoming a leader among children. After that conference, I realized that you are becoming a person with your own realm, your own ways of moving through the world, your own relationships and struggles and joys. All I can do is wish you luck.

Love,
Mommy

Dear Mia,

You are learning your letters! This is thrilling not because I'm one of those parents who wants her kid to learn to read first, or impress her teachers by learning to spell before her third birthday. I don't care about any of that. (I didn't learn to read until second grade, after spending a year slogging through Winnie the Pooh in the slow reading group, and I turned out to be a writer and English major who likes nothing better than to sit down with a good book.) What is so exciting about your new love of letters is that it comes entirely from you. You seem to have had a realization: There is language and meaning all around you! Those are not just lines and squiggles, they are pieces of a code, and you want to crack it. You spend your spare moments in front of the refrigerator, calling out the names of your letter magnets, arranging them into lines that look to you like words and sentences. You read the letters on everything: pretzel bags, license plates, road signs. I often hear your excited voice from the backseat yelling, "That's a B! That's Brady's letter!" The other night you sat down at your little table, all by yourself, and after awhile announced, "I drew an A!" And you had. You wrote your first letter without any help, or even encouragement, from us.

I so hope this is the beginning of a a lifelong love of language for you. There are very few things you could do to disappoint me, as long as you life a happy and ethical life. But I can't help feeling that I would be heartbroken if you grew up to be a person who doesn't enjoy reading. Reading is the conduit to knowledge. It makes you smarter, more worldly, more open-minded. For those of us who learn to enjoy it, it is one of the great pleasures of life. I so hope you will see its magic. For the moment, at least, it seems you already do.

In so many ways, your third year is starting out wonderfully. You are so happy and gleeful. You love to laugh, and you often demand, "Be silly with me." The other day, we were out for a walk, and we came upon a children's concert. You ran right up to the front of the crowd and spent the next half hour jumping and spinning and dancing. Not a hint of self-consciousness — you will one day realize what a  gift that was. Even when you are a monster, which you still are some days, you redeem yourself with some adorable proclamation. Like the other morning, when after making every single step our morning routine more difficult that in needed to be, driving me just to the edge of insanity, you said on your way to the car, completely unbidden, "Mommy? I love you so much."

I love you too, no matter how much I want to kill you sometimes.

Love,
Mommy

Mia: 3 years old

Dear Mia,

Yesterday you turned 3. To think it was only three years ago that we were in that dimly-lit special care nursery, watching your oxygen levels, thinking that you would be stuck in that little plastic crib forever. Now, that baby is a stranger to me. I cannot imagine how this  little girl who jumps and sings and giggles and swims came from that tiny caterpillar who slept for hour after hour in her plastic crib. You are a butterfly now, utterly transformed.

Let me think ... what are some of my favorite things about the 3-year-old Mia? I love the way she sings all the time. Every situation gets wrapped into a song, new words set to the tune of an old favorite. (When your grandmother arrived at our house last night: "Grammy in the dell, Grammy in the dell, Hi ho the dairy-o, Grammy in the dell.") She is also a great maker of medleys, slipping from one song into the next. ("Old McDonald had a farm, E-I-E-I-Oh so bright.") I love the way she shouts "Yeah!!!" with an expression of pure glee, and sometimes a little jump, when I ask her whether she wants to do something fun. At this age, all it takes is the offer of a quesadilla at Moe's or a popsicle at Locopops.  I love the way, when she wants someone to do something for her, she says, "Do dat!" I love her enthusiasm for books, so intense that she can sit through long books intended for third-graders. Sometimes I think I could read from a tome of Lincoln's collected speeches and she would sit rapt for as long as my voice held out.

We have so much fun with you in our lives. We have spent virtually every weekend this summer swimming. You have learned how to kick all the way across the pool in your inner tube. You have enjoyed the rites of summer with the kind of gusto we had long forgotten. You gobble down fresh blueberries and peaches like they are the world's most precious treats. You love popsicles more than life itself. You beam with joy every time we push you in a swing. You rejoice in ocean waves. You love to help me water the plants and, when you have to pee while we are outside, you yank off your clothes and go in the yard. The other night, I told you we would take cupcakes to school the next morning. When you woke, you immediately wanted to see the cupcakes. "Wouldn't it be great," your dad said, "to wake up in the morning and the only thing on your mind is cupcakes?"

You have spent much of this summer looking forward to your birthday. For weeks you've been waking up asking, "Is it my birthday?" I felt so much pressure to make this birthday as great as your fantasies. You had homemade cupcakes, and a pool party with your friends, and a giant play kitchen to tear open when you woke on your birthday. I hope it was everything you dreamed of, and now I'm glad it's over.

I would like to see this birthday as a fresh start. In addition to all your deliciously cute qualities, you have also developed a knack for pushing my buttons. When you're in one of your difficult moods (usually at the end of a day with no nap, which is most days anymore) you twist away from me when I try to put on your underwear, run away when it's time to get in the bath, generally do everything you can to make things harder for me. Probably your worst trick is to pee or poop in your pants, minutes after you have sworn that you didn't need to go potty. In the past few months, this has happened more times than I care to remember. Sometimes I am so frustrated that I want to scream. And do you know what you do when I yell at you? You laugh in my face. It's enough to make a person understand child abuse. But as I head into your fourth year, I want to learn to be more patient. I want to gaze calmly at your twisting, wriggling, giggling antics. I want deal with your limit-testing and poopy underwear without anger or resentment. I want to try and remember that there's only a very short window in life when you get to run naked and giggling down the hallway, your mind dancing with visions of cupcakes and baby dolls.

Enjoy it while it lasts, honey, and wish me luck. I'm going to need it.

Love,
Mommy

Mia: Two years nine months

Dear Mia,

Now that you're getting older, I think I will go to writing these letters a little more sporadically, every couple months, when I feel like it. I cannot take the guilt of the monthly deadline. OK? OK.

I would like to begin today by thanking you. Life at our house has gotten much much easier lately. You are so much more cooperative than you were just a couple short months ago. The tantrums are lessening if not disappearing. You are happy to go where we go, to play with us or to play by yourself. The ear-piercing shriek is rarely heard. You are even learning to sit in your seat in restaurants (hallelujah!) and to walk beside us rather than running in every direction other than the one we need to go in. Sometimes, you are even willing to hold our hands. And after weeks of a bedtime ritual that involved 1-2 hours of you screaming and stripping naked (occasionally peeing in your crib for good measure) and demanding tissues and water and blankets and anything else you could think of, you now go to bed without a fuss again. THANK YOU! THANK YOU!

The other night we moved you into your big girl bed without even a single whine or whimper. We took the crib away and that was that. Looking at your little body in that big old bed, I am forced to admit that you are no longer a baby. You are slowly but surely learning to use the potty and soon the last vestiges of your babyhood will be gone. (But please keep the chubby little hands and belly for a bit longer!) It occurred to me the other night that in just over two years, less time than I've had you so far, I'll be walking you to kindergarten. And from there it's just a few brief moments until you're a teenager and then you're moving out of the house and it's all over. Must change subject now ... starting to hyperventilate.

When I think about you growing up and away from me, I can't help but think about having another baby. I've spent a lot of energy in the past year or so wondering whether I should have another child. I've wondered whether I'm depriving you of an important relationship and turning you into another spoiled only child, just like me. I've worried that your holidays won't be as joyful as those of children with siblings, that you will be more alone in the world than you should be. But most of all, I've wondered whether I should deny myself another experience as wonderful as mothering you. Having you was the best thing I ever did, hands down. How could I not want more of that? But lately I've felt at peace with my decision to stop here, to simply enjoy the beautiful life we have rather than searching for something more. You can spend your life caught up in that search, if you're not careful.

A couple weeks ago, on Memorial Day weekend, we took you and your brother Zack to the boat and the beach. We went sailing and slept in a tent. We took long bike rides. We looked for jellyfish off the side of the dock. We grilled steaks and ate in the grass. We had bagels at The Bean and drinks (milk for you, beer for us) at the Tiki Bar. We swam in the ocean, and you begged Zack and me to take you "far away," deep into the water. You laughed with joy as the waves sloshed past us (and took it in stride when one smacked you in the face). We buried ourselves in the sand and built sand castles. You were so much easier than you used to be, no longer threatening to run into the water every second, able to play happily on the boat rather than try to climb over the sides. I love that we take trips together, that we spend long days in the sun, that you are more familiar with sailboats and ocean waves than with Sesame Street. This is our life, and it is just perfect as it is.

Love,
Mommy

Mia: Two years seven months

Dear Mia,

You have developed a split personality, a Jekyll and Hyde kind of thing.

One minute, you are the cutest little thing that's ever walked the earth. You giggle at the slightest provocation and make the most adorable off-the-wall statements. (The other night you were eating a bunch of grapes and you discovered a tiny one. You said, "Little tiny grape. He needs his mommy," and then you held a bigger grape next to him.) You pedal your tricycle, smiling with pride as we cheer you on. You explore the yard, picking up sticks that become your prized possessions. You ask us to tickle you. You sit rapt beside us as we read you long books. You squeal with delight at the sight of cats. You make friends with other kids in restaurants, who you call "my girl" or "my boy." You make up stories, like the other day when I asked why you cried in the car, and you told me that a BUG! was on you, a RED BUG!, a BIG RED BUG WAS STINGIN' ME! A LADYBUG!

But then there is the next minute, when you are so crazy and grumpy and screamy that I don't know what to do with you. You stick your bottom lip out just like a caricature of a bratty kid, and everything makes you mad. You want water and, if we give it to you, it's in the wrong cup. You cry when I take off the baby's clothes and you scream when I try to put them back on. You hit me or pull my hair just to see my reaction. You throw yourself on the ground. And the screaming, oh. my. god., the screaming. You have perfected an absolutely ear-piercing shriek that you like to use whenever something displeases you. I think you are learning that it is particularly useful in public places, like restaurants. You use it like a weapon, and it is a powerful one. The other week, we went to Pennsylvania to visit your grandparents, and on the way home, you screamed like a maniac the whole way to the airport. I will never know why. After a while I felt as if something cracked inside me. If I hadn't been driving, I probably would have hit you. By the time we got to the security line, and you were still screaming and running away from me and rolling on the dirty floor and screaming some more, I was carrying your kicking body and crying. It took me the rest of the day to recover.

Despite it all, you are, in so many ways, an inspiration to me. I envy your presence, your ability to be exactly where you are, without thought for the past or the future. You live in the moment in a way I can only dream of. And your enthusiasm, your sheer joy, is beautiful. You are totally unjaded and without pretense. If you see a friend, you are not ashamed to show your excitement by squealing and running in circles in the driveway. Even in your fits, I can't help admiring you. You feel everything fully, and you let it out without regard to who might hear or how it might make you look. You don't think, "It's a beautiful day and I'm in a beautiful park and the spring blossoms are bursting. I shouldn't be sad." No, you just go on and cry in the beautiful garden, with no regard for how you "should" feel. If we could all live the way you do, we would probably be happier.

Love,
Mommy

Mia: Two years five months

Dear Mia,

Well, you are still 2, and you are still acting it. You have reached the "No help me! I do it myself!" stage. You want to walk rather than be carried, and most of all, you want to get in the carseat by yourself. Now, this could be a positive development, less of us lugging your 30-pound body and wrenching our backs getting you in the carseat. But mostly, it has become a massive delaying tactic for you. There is no such thing as going anywhere quickly now. Just getting in the car is 5 minutes of rediscovering old toys on the car floor, climbing into the seat, standing in it backwards, looking out the back window, refusing to sit down and, finally, me counting to three and then forcing you into a sitting position, over your vehement protests. Do you have any idea how frustrating this is when I need to get somewhere in a hurry? Sometimes I have to do yogic breathing to hold down the urge to scream.

But I'm not here today to talk about the ways in which you drive me crazy. Right now, I want to remember the joy. This month, I showed you how to rub noses, an eskimo kiss is what I've always called it. Now, you frequently jump onto my lap, stick your smiling face an inch from mine and say, "Nose kiss!" You giggle helplessly every time I do it. You beg me to lie in my "big bed" with you and pretend to go night-night, our faces close enough to feel each other's breath. We read a bedtime book called "Sleepy Cadillac," and sometimes you lie down on the bed or the couch and say, "I'm going in da Cadillac. I'm a float away in da Cadillac." You like to pull up my shirt and lie, skin to skin, on my belly. You sing all the time now, constantly giving us your renditions of "Wheels on the Bus" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Sar." Whenever you see a bell or a chime, you serenade us with "Jingles bells, Jingles bells, ALLdeway." The other day as I was changing your diaper, you burst forth with an entire song that I had never heard before. "Way up high, in the tree, one little apple smiled at me..." You taught me a song! I can't tell you how proud that makes me.

Many, many times every day you do or say something that is absolutely, undeniably adorable. You run with your arms held out to the sides like wings, yelling "Catch, catch." You call the sink the "washhands." You call out as we leave daycare, "Buh-bye friends." The other night, I put on your pajamas, and you said, "I wanna show Zack my jammies." You carefully descended the stairs and shouted at Zack sitting on the couch, "Jammies!" and then you climbed right back upstairs, your mission accomplished. You have become obsessed with the book "Arthur and the Dog Show," and each time you see the picture of Pal with his leash wrapped around a lamppost, you point at it and shout with pure glee, "Dog wrap on da light!" You demand stories before bedtime now, so I made up one about a dinosaur who comes out from under your crib at night to throw all your animals and take off your clothes. Now, whenever we find you naked in your crib, which happens fairly regularly, you say, "Dinosaur take of my clothes."

A couple weeks ago, we took a hike along a wooded trail. After seeing some other small children dutifully trudging along, holding their parents' hands, we figured we should take you out of the backpack and let you hike. Well, in the next 15 minutes, we covered approximately one one-hundreth of a mile. Trying to get you to go in any one direction is, quite literally, like trying to herd a cat. You wanted to climb onto stumps and pick up sticks. You veered off the trail, clomping through piles of leaves and pushing through branches. You tripped over roots and sprawled onto the ground, and then got up without a whimper and kept exploring. You turned and headed the wrong direction down the trail. We tried walking on, out of sight, hoping you would hurry along to keep up. But you didn't care where we went; you were going your own way. A group of hikers came by and chuckled at you, clomping around like a little woodland animal. I told them, "We see all these other kids hiking nicely, holding their parents' hands." One of the women turned back to me and said, "You wouldn't want a follower."

She's right. I wouldn't. I wouldn't want any kid but you, the feisty little girl I've loved absolutely from the very first second I saw her face.

Love,
Mommy

Mia: Two years four months

Dear Mia,

Oh my God I am tired. The only way to describe you right now is intense. You are nearly always intensely happy, intensely interested, intensely pissed off or, perhaps most frequently, intensely in need of something — whether it be Baby or a sticker on your finger or a bowl of yogurt. You need these things like no one has ever needed them before. You need that sticker wrapped around your outstretched index finger, or your body will convulse and you will fall to the floor shrieking. You need Baby's blanket to cover her just so. You need to get on the bed right now, or to get off it, or to go downstairs or upstairs or outside — and you need it immediately. When I spend time with you, I often realize afterward that I have been in a kind of meditative state. I have been completely in the moment, thinking of nothing but you and your immediate needs, in a way that I am never able to achieve during yoga. I often emerge from putting you to bed feeling like I have just wrestled an elephant — and won, but only by the skin of my teeth.

I don't know where my happy-go-lucky kid went. These days, there is so much whining and shouting and "No like it!" that sometimes I feel I'm on the verge of collapsing in a puddle of tears. Almost every time we want to put on your coat we have to chase you and wrestle you, screaming, into it. Dinner is rejected while you demand heaps of sour cream, which you eat plain with a spoon. You want milk, and then when we give it to you, you bat it away and cry, so we put it away, and then you want it again, and then you're crying because you need me to fix your baby stroller and then you're emptying the kitchen cabinets and the next thing I know you've pulled out the step ladder and you're playing with wine glasses and dunking your doll in a pot of dirty water and — ahhhh, I just need to pee and make a sandwich!

Sometimes, when you are really at your worst, two minutes in time out in your bedroom seems to reset you. But your newest trick is to kick or hit me over and over and say, "I wanna go time out." What do I do now, when you are literally asking for punishment? I would like to say that whining and misbehaving never gets you what you want. But I have to admit that, sometimes, we just want a little peace during dinner so much that we silence your whining with another viewing of "The Grinch." So we're teaching you that if you cry and stand in your chair and refuse to eat your dinner, you'll get to watch TV! Great parenting.

I've never been one for wishing away your childhood, but I will be glad when you grow into a slightly more cooperative human being. Because right now, cajoling you into going where I need you to go is taking virtually every ounce of my energy. But at the same time, how can I wish away the chubby-legged little girl in footie pajamas bounding across my living room? The girl who kisses her babies, pats their backs and tells them, "I love you." The girl whose smile is so big and bright and full of joy that it takes my breath away. I definitely wouldn't have missed out on the  girl who ripped open presents on Christmas morning, saying as she began each one, "What's inside?" and when she found a box under the paper, saying happily: "It's a box!" No, I'm not ready to trade you in yet. But don't test me.

Love,
Mommy