Light it Up and Watch it Burn

It's cliche at best, but when people look at your swollen, pregnant belly, give a nostalgic smile and say with a hint of sadness to enjoy every moment because the time flies by in the blink of an eye, they truly aren't kidding. Obviously, it's impossible to enjoy every minute because, as any parent knows, toddlers are cute, adorable, diabolical assholes. Unless, of course, you are like my mother. She swears we were perfect and never acted out. I don't have the heart to break it to her, but I'm pretty sure that's the wine induced amnesia talking. I suffer from the same condition.

The toddler terrorist turned two last weekend. Two! I was going to write a sentimental post through my waterfall of tears, but then good ol'e Bugsy Malone saved the day. She wasn't going to let me get sad as I looked back fondly over the last two years, forgetting all of the hard days and remembering only the sweetest of milestones. Like the time she first smiled at me, or the day she first garbled, "love you Mama", or the way she fits perfectly in my lap allowing me to be a total weirdo and sniff the sweet scent of her baby head.

Nope. Bugsy Malone had a different agenda. On her last day of being one, she pulled out a can of kerosene, threw it over the past year, lit a match and walked away in an explosive blaze of glory as she burnt that shit to the ground.

It started with a preschool play date. The preschool teacher may very well have been Miss Honey from one of my favorite books, Matilda. And if that teacher was Miss Honey, then Bugsy was the Trunchbull. She was so intent on reconstructing the power paradigm of the preschool's educational system that after the longest hour of my life, while the toddler terrorist was getting a tattoo and taking a smoke break in the school bathroom, I fearfully asked sweet, terrorized Miss Honey if the Trunchbull was going to get kicked out of the program. She assured me that no, of course the Trunchbull was not going to get expelled. I raised a skeptical brow, certain I detected the tremble of fear of a woman who had been locked in the Chokey by a toddler terrorist a time or two.

To continue on our rambunctious roll, we went to the doctor for Bugsy's two year checkup. The toddler terrorist gave the nurse a piece of her mind as she threw every Parenting magazine in the exam room up in the air as if they were confetti. Her pediatrician couldn't get out of that room fast enough, stumbling out as he stammered, "I've always wanted a patient who would grow up to be a leader...Ma-ma-maybe she'll be president one day..."

So because she had been incredibly well-behaved, or maybe because I wanted to salvage the smoldering remains of an entire year, or - even more likely - because I am pregnant, I was traumatized, and I needed to eat my feelings - I treated Bugsy to frozen yogurt. She put on her angel face, hypnotized me into a false sense of security and charmed me into taking her to Barnes and Noble to pick out a birthday book. In addition to a book, she picked out a doctor's kit! I strutted up to the checkout line, chest puffed with pride as I contemplated her future as a world renowned brain surgeon. She really would be a leader! And just as I had completely given in to the daydream delusions of doctordom, I heard a CRASH! followed by several collective gasps.

The world blurred around me and voices became muted as I turned around in slow motion. I was met with a scene of destruction that only a toddler terrorist can create. There stood Bugsy with a look of surprise and, might I add, satisfaction, and beside her lay the shattered remains of what used to be a rather large, ceramic decorative pumpkin. Before I could spring into action, the store clerk got on the loudspeaker and announced, in a voice dripping with exasperation and disapproval, that a cleanup was needed because someone (insert stern glance in our direction) broke a ceramic pumpkin and the scene was very unsafe for customers. I quickly and shamefully paid for the broken merchandise and slunk out of there with my head hung in shame while the terrorist raised a victorious fist and declared imminent toddler revolution.

Finally, later that night, as Che Guevara Bugsy Malone nestled perfectly into my lap while I read her a bedtime story, the day's mortifying events melted away. Maybe it was the intoxicating smell of her perfect baby head that allowed me to forget the toddler guerilla warfare in which I had been engaged all day, but as I said goodnight for the last time to my perfect little one-year-old, bittersweet heartache tugged at my soul and my eyes welled with tears. What a fitting end to an amazing year.

Terrible twos...We're coming for ya!