• Beignets from Violetta
• Mallhopping with the kid, who insisted on getting a plush Koopa Troopa (he’s been on a Super Mario kick)
• Ice cream using the gift certificate I won in the Metro Parent drawing
• Dangling our feet in the fountain at Director Park

It was a pretty good day.

Anyway: the party was a success, if a little under-attended (one group of guests had apparently been sure it was the next weekend, at which point they e-mailed me going “Um, did you know that your party was a week ago? You probably did.” Which was funny, and I may have LOLed, but only very quietly and to myself). The kid had a fabulous time. He helped me decorate the littlest cupcakes (which he decided were meteors). No one else had any idea what the cake/cupcake spread was supposed to be, which was fine. I guess.

Also a (qualified) success: the rocket softie. I made some modifications to a pattern I found in One Yard Wonders (which is a pretty fabulous book, if you’re into that sort of thing) and it turned out kind of awesome. The kid likes it, which was the important part.

In other crafty news, I finally slipcovered the Fabulous!Rocking!Glider! (the exclamation points are to emphasize the fact that I love the lovely glider and am not going to get rid of it despite the increasing impracticality of having it in our house). A favorite snuggling spot for both kid and cats, the F!R!G! was sort of disgustingly stained and matted with cat hair, and since the cushions were both a) cream-colored and b) upholstered, cleaning it was a pain. ENTER CRAFTY MAMA, with her IKEA fabric and her barely-passable sewing machine skills! Given that I don’t have the first clue what I’m doing, I think it turned out pretty well.

All those other grand ideas I had? Not going to happen. I was totally going to make garland, and ornaments, and stuff. But what did I do instead? I caught a cold. (I did make gingerbread men. I’m not dead.)

Even so, I can’t wait. Ellison is so excited he can barely stand it. I have a feeling preschool is one of the things that is going to fill my child with joy.

But.

So I just snarfed a huge piece of really gross cake and I feel elephantine and miserable and I really want to sit in a quiet room where I have no projects (over)due and no one is demanding that I console them while they pee on me,* for christ’s sake, and maybe, just MAYBE, I can sleep for more than two hours at a stretch, please, yes?

*The kid is having a slight potty-training relapse. I mention this in case you were entertaining notions of a more adult nature, which, ew.

Don’t worry about it.

Seriously. I started worrying pretty much the second I found out I was pregnant (am I gaining enough weight? What does that pain mean? Am I gaining too much weight? Is he going to be born with both legs fused together? Did all that kicking dislocate one of my ribs?) and it only ramped up from there.

First there was the milk situation, and the fact that mine took like 4 days to come in and the lactation people were making me feel really, really bad about it, like I was deliberately starving my baby or something (note to lactation consultants: I would tell you to suck it but you’d probably take it the wrong way).

Then there were the milestones that did not correspond with established charts: clapping (oh, how I worried about the clapping), jumping, talking.

We got walking out of the way relatively early, what with the taking his first steps at 8.5 months, but he didn’t really talk until well after he was 2 and still has some trouble with pronouns. And I think I may have mentioned how worried I was about potty training (but we all know how that turned out).

But for all my fretting and teeth-gnashing and late-night scouring of the internet, the kid did just fine. He reached all his milestones when he was ready to reach them, with relatively little input from me. It’s like – gasp! – I don’t have total and complete control over my child’s development! It’s like things happen when they happen no matter how much I worry about them!

He might not be reading super early like some of his friends, or drawing recognizable pictures like other friends, but I’m not going to worry about it. My kid is who he is, and I can’t imagine him any other way.

Except maybe he could eat more. That would be okay.

I can now use the childcare center at IKEA.

(Honestly, it was the first thing that occurred to me when we realized he was potty trained. But I have yet to do it, since they’re remodeling. Remodeling! Damn them and their delicious meatballs!)

On a larger scale, we can actually actively consider sending the kid to preschool, the thought of which fills me with a giddy sort of glee. Not that I don’t enjoy spending every second of every day with a small child climbing on me and yanking or poking some portion of my anatomy, but since I’m usually trying very, very hard to get some work done during those seconds, I think the kid is often bored. I’m a firm believer in boredom as parenting device, mind you, but I also like the idea of the kid learning to play nicely with other children his own age and listen to authority figures who aren’t his parents. Plus he’s seriously awesome, and why would I want to keep that all to myself?

So, we’re looking. Preschool hasn’t even been on my radar, so I have no idea if other parents are reading this and laughing hysterically at the idea of me thinking I can just waltz in and enroll my kid all willy-nilly. Go ahead, laugh. I can’t hear you over the sound of my own denial.

Yes. You read that right. He potty trained himself.

About two weeks ago, Ellison announced that he wanted to use the potty. Nothing new; he’d been doing that periodically for months, but last time I hunkered down and tried to get him to use it reliably resulted in nothing but soiled underpants and tears. So, sure, he used the potty, and then I went to put his diaper on and he was like “No! No diaper!”

Okay. So I let him wear some big-boy underpants, thinking what the hell, we don’t have to be anywhere.

And he wore them all day. And didn’t have any accidents.

And then his diaper was dry in the morning. And he wore underpants all that day, too.

And then all of the next night.

And it’s been two weeks.

DUDE. If I had known potty training would be this easy I would never have stressed out about it. This parenting thing is a piece of cake.

I mention this because today Ellison’s breath smells like rubbing alcohol, and I foresee nothing but doooooom. (Though it does explain yesterday’s foray into Meltdown City, in which a sobbing tantrum was thrown every five minutes or so by my normally cheerful kid.) We all had the flu a couple of weeks ago & are only just now getting back to normal; the last thing I want is another illness! But the kid’s got a fantastic immune system and usually kicks whatever bug he gets pretty quickly. Mommy and daddy, though, are another story…

I don’t miss all-night wakeups, endless nursing sessions, teething, drooling, or spit-up. I don’t miss his frustration over not being able to walk – which, if you recall, he got over pretty damned early – or talk. I don’t miss having to lug the stroller with us on every outing (although, let me just say, if we’d gotten an Ergo sooner my life would have been SO MUCH EASIER OMG). I don’t miss poopsplosions or chewed-up books. And I really, really don’t miss being pregnant.

And yet.

But my big kid (he’s three! Seriously. I would not kid about a thing like that) is pretty cool, too. He likes Doctors Who and Horrible . He enjoys pirate songs on YouTube. He’ll say “That’s pretty weird” when confronted with things like Hamster on a Piano. He thinks birthdays are the greatest thing ever, with Christmas a close second. He won’t get out of bed in the morning until we “Guggle some more!” And he’s, you know, crazy handsome.

A friend on Facebook said “You know, you two really have a responsibility to the world to have another child. I mean he is just so cute.” She’s right. He really is.

Happy (belated) birthday, kid.

My kid is inexorably, adorably inching closer to three years of age, a time when he will miraculously be capable of rational thought and self-sufficiency. I am very certain I will not be disappointed when, in a little less than two weeks, he wakes up and makes me a full English breakfast complete with espresso just the way I like it and a tiny bouquet of freshly-picked flowers. Because, three. Three will be my salvation, people.

But since he’s still two, the kid has been making the most of it, transforming from relatively easy-going (if stubborn and opinionated) toddler to Oh My God I Don’t Know How You Can Scream For So Long Without Taking A Breath (And Other Stories). We’ve got the old standbys of Meals and Bedtime, taken to new extremes (will not eat anything but granola bars! Refuses to sleep before midnight!), as well as some new and exciting triggers such as Cannot Possibly Hold Hands With Mommy If Daddy Is In The Same State and Diapers: Not For Changing. I would make a comment about the end of my rope, were I still able to remember a time when I had rope to measure.

Kids: you totally want one!

Which of course means I saw the cutest siblings out the other day, a brother and a sister around 8 and 10, horsing around at the crosswalk but then putting their arms around each other while they crossed the street. Just for a second, but long enough for me to think I want my kid to be a big brother. Because he’d be pretty awesome at it, probably. (Never mind that I couldn’t stand my sister when we were kids and we didn’t get along until she was probably 16 and I was 20…) I have to keep reminding myself of how much I loathed being pregnant and how nicely having one kid fits into our lives, because otherwise I’d be all baby crazy again and no one wants that.

And, seriously, could I handle another round of the Terrible Twos?