This week in toddler town

Monkey loves being mommy’s helper. She gets both her shoes and Turtle’s shoes and brings them to me so we can go “side” (outside). She helps me with the laundry – yesterday she carried as many clean clothes as her little arms could hold from the laundry room to the living room. She is also showing a deeply sweet side - she reaches for Turtle’s hand when we go out for walks and is the first to give out kisses at bedtime. These wonderful instincts have really sharpened over the past week.

Also over the past week, Monkey has had a number of hysterical meltdowns. Sometimes when I try to put her in her highchair, she screams and claws and stiffens her legs and generally fights like I’m trying to put her in a pot of boiling water. She may eat the food she’s offered, or she may scream when she sees it, dump over the contents of the plate, and then throw the plate on the floor.

The biggest struggle we had this week was over an apple. She kept saying “apul, apul” (this was after she had thrown the offered lunch on the floor). So I peeled an apple and cut her a few slices. Which she threw on the floor. So I moved on to cheese. I cut her a slice, she ate a bite, and seemed happy. I cut the slice into little pieces. Which she threw on the floor. That’s when I kind of lost it – I held her arms tightly to her side so she’d stop throwing the food and said through clenched teeth, “This is what there is to eat.” She started crying, a really sad cry, not like the frustrated screaming she’d been doing moments before. It was like she was saying, “I can’t make myself understood and now Mommy is mad at me.” That calmed me down quickly, so I gave her a hug and asked her again what she wanted. She said “apul.” I gave her the whole apple this time, and she was so happy, holding the big apple all by herself and taking bites out of it like a grownup. That’s when it dawned on me that she didn’t want her food cut into little pieces like she was some kind of baby! So I gave her a huge chunk of cheese and she took a bite out of it, then set it on the table, all the while hugging her huge apple close to her chest. She chewed that apple pretty much down to the core, stopping occasionally to take a bite of her big hunk of cheese, and she was happy, and the storm passed.

What is Turtle doing during all this? Sometimes she follows Monkey’s lead in throwing her plate on the floor, which sometimes pushes me to pick up one of those plates and throw it into the sink as hard as I can. But usually she just ignores Monkey’s tirade and eats until she’s finished, which is a relief.

Now, I know I make Turtle out to be a little angel, but let me tell you Turtle’s secret: she’s a biter. And I don’t mean love bites. I’m talking tear-the-flesh-off-your-arm bites. Just ask Monkey, the unlucky recipient of the wrath of Turtle. Yesterday Turtle was sitting on the fireplace hearth and Monkey had the audacity to come sit down next to her. Turtle leaned over and bit Monkey on the arm so severely that it left a deep mark, which turned into a swollen red welt, and then settled into a purply bruise. Turtle has been a biter pretty much since her first tooth came in, but she’s really picked up the pace over the past couple of weeks; Monkey always has a bite bruise somewhere on her body. I correct her every time, give her a short “time out” and then make her “apologize” to Monkey, which she does by kind of leaning over and patting Monkey on the arm. But I am terrified that she is going to bite someone in our playgroup one of these days, causing me to die of horror on the spot. If Monkey had a huge meltdown at the playground, I’d be embarrassed but I’d get through it. But if Turtle takes a hunk of flesh out of someone else’s kid, well, I just don’t think I could show my face again. I wonder why biting seems so awful, so stigmatized, when it's a common issue? My guess is that it seems primitive and violent, something that a proper suburban child just shouldn’t do if she’s being raised right. So I’ll be watching little Turtle like a hawk tomorrow afternoon at the playground.

I could go on forever about every little idiosyncrasy of each of the girls as they hurtle through toddlerhood; this post has barely scratched the surface of their escapades this week. I didn’t even talk about the night Monkey refused to be put in the bath, screaming and climbing out repeatedly until we gave up; or about the next night, when it was Turtle’s turn to melt down at bath time, screaming and climbing out of the tub repeatedly until we gave up. Or about the night when they kissed each other at least twenty times before bedtime. Or how cute it was the other day when they held hands as they walked around the driveway. Every day we have a high and a low, and sometimes Monkey is the sweet angel and Turtle is the drama queen. I try to remind myself daily that my job as Twin Momma is to focus on each girl as an individual, to help each girl develop the full spectrum of her personality, and to forgive myself on those days when I handle the stress by screaming like a banshee.