Two

Two is a hard age. It just IS - and if your two year-old has never driven you to the point of throwing your own tantrum or pulling your hair out, then I don't want to hear from you. Right now there is a particularly -ahem - determined and...um, expressive little fellow of that age living here, and he makes for some interesting times these days. But even during such times, I still love watching the momentous development taking place. Since we don't remember being that age, it behooves us to imagine what it must be like to be so small - so recent, for heaven's sake - and to be awakening to such an enormous thing as one's very personality. It must be overwhelming to grapple with emotions that are bigger than you are, and to know that you CAN go and CAN choose, etc., but that you are still being told at so many turns where you must and mustn't go and what you must and mustn't do. With this in mind, I do try to steer my little ones as gently through this stage as possible, because while I certainly know they can be stubborn and disobedient on occasion, I believe that most of the time, they are just trying to carve out a place in their world. I try to remember, in addition, that our Heavenly Father is infinitely patient with our infantile attempts at holiness - and I believe it's a similar thing. We are learning, the same way a two year-old is learning.

So anyway, my two year-old, who is doing an awful lot of that kind of learning, has been particularly emotional this week, and even as I've comforted him, it's been very interesting to ponder what exactly must be going though him. A couple days ago, the kids were watching Aladdin, and he unexpectedly burst into tears when Aladdin and Jasmine leave for their "Whole New World" carpet ride - because they left the tiger behind. His distress was so pitiful, I wouldn't have dared to laugh. Then last night we watched Homeward Bound (in the absence of new releases this summer, we are exploring some classics!), and about ten times in the hours preceding our movie night, I cautioned the older kids that it was an adventure movie, so there would be some dramatic moments, but that it did have a perfectly happy ending. I stressed this so often because my kids can become rather emotional over those kinds of moments. What's interesting about this is that I don't mean frightening moments - Drew, for instance, watched Lord of the Rings without flinching, but cried bitterly over Eight Below, which was about the adventures of some Husky dogs. A couple of the dogs died, and some were wounded, and if you could have heard anything over his passionate sobs, you could have heard his heart rending in two. And we don't dare show anything that involves a child (animal or human) being parted in any way from a parent or sibling. Never. I am never quite sure, incidentally, if this a result of good parenting or bad parenting - do they simply have very strong, healthy attachments, or have I somehow made them terribly insecure?

But I digress (and it is not all about me, anyway!). My point is that I had told the older kids this so that they could decide whether or not they wanted to watch the movie. I had thought the younger ones would just have a good time watching some animal antics. As it was, the older ones did choose to watch, and made it through admirably. Ryan enjoyed the animals (and the light bathroom humor, predictably), as expected. But this time it was Chase's lower lip that began to quiver when the dogs began to leave, and the cat was still deciding whether to go. "They going to leave the kitty!" Fortunately, the cat followed in short order. But when she fell into the river later in the movie, the floodgates opened. "The kitty in the water! The doggies NOT going to save her!" he wailed, and as I took him out of the room, I tried to console him with the fact that the cat would in fact be ok. "No, she's NOT! She going to go under the w-a-t-e-r..." he argued passionately through unhappy and angry tears. But he also insisted on going back in to see what would happen, and even after mostly calming down, he asked periodically, palms upraised and with some indignation, "WHERE is the kitty?" Her return to the screen was greeted with a shuddering sigh of relief.

We repeated this a few times, whenever any of of the animals met with trouble, and while I didn't like to see him so unhappy, I thought again of how overwhelming...and hard...and at the same time mysteriously wonderful it must be to be two. It IS "terrible" when this two year-old makes permanent marks on the leather couch (groan!) - and, of course, it is "terrific" when he makes funny comments or does new things. But beyond that, here is this relatively new person finding out who he is, what the world is all about, and how he feels about it. It's a big job for such a little guy, but he'll make it - and we'll have such fun (most of the time!) helping him do it.