All Smiles.

There is no accurate way to describe my feelings for her. They are constantly in battle with each other. The love and the frustration. The intensity and the intimacy and the screaming tantrums and the kisses and her yelling and her stubbornness. It's impossible to sum up and impossible to dissect. It's just....

Lillie.

She's my third two year old. The others were nothing like her. That's comparing spring rains to a midnight thunderstorm right over your head. She cries all day. She stomps her foot and screams and falls on the ground with, "no no no's". But not fairly often. All the time. Every five minutes. Nap or no nap, hungry or full, she's the same.

She fights around every turn. Every decision I make hinges on what her reaction will be, whether or not I can handle the screaming at that moment. And it's not ever the normal things like I don't give her a piece of candy so she screams. It's things like, if I sit on the couch she'll scream because she had something else planned for me to do. If I give her juice it's always in the wrong container. If the girls make a wrong move with the wrong toy it's over. For five minutes she screams and hollers and we are all very afraid. Sometimes I'll walk through the hall and she'll burst apart with screams and I'll look around, check myself over, searching for something, anything, that could illicit that type of reaction. I find nothing.

When she's not crying, she demands certain things of the household. There is a general rule in our house. Stay out of the kitchen. This rule is for Lillie's sake. If you walk in there, she's begging and pleading and wanting you to put her on the counter and comb the cupboards for food and treats and then she's laying on the floor in a tantrum because you won't let her hold the butter.

I'm not allowed to talk on the phone. That's a big one. Taking a shower is a huge deal and if I can run in there quickly and shampoo my hair before she's out there banging on the door crying, I consider it an accomplishment.

I know, I know. She'll grow out of it. At least that's what Jake said last night. I understand, she probably will. But what about the meantime? From when she turned one she began to be like this and has been ever since. So say she grows out of it in a year. Great. Great news. But that's a YEAR. What do I do until then? How do I survive? Build a bunker for myself in the backyard? Put Enya in my iPod and listen to it full blast and lock myself in my room? I'm to that point. I just love peace, I love quiet, I love tranquility. And not much resembles that.

Of course she's delicious and funny and interesting and loving. She talks better every day. When she wears her pink sweat pants, holy mama she looks gor------geous. I eat her neck away to nothing.

They say kids like her are "highly intelligent" and will "go places in life". It's hard to say if that's true or not, but I hope all of this muddling through will be worth it someday. My vengeful self lies in wait of when her first baby turns one and she calls me and goes, "uhhhhhhhhh..... having a little trouble over here!".

I will be all smiles.