I love my video baby monitor.  Being able to see what she’s doing in her crib saves me from going in her room at every noise or cry.  Sometimes she’s just crying in her sleep.  Sometimes she’s prattling to her Snoopy.  It’s fun to watch her in the black-and-white Nightvision, with her little glowing raccoon eyes.

This is also how she wakes me up in the morning.  I rise to her singsong voice saying “Mommeeeee…. come get meeeee….”  It’s funny and sweet, and a nice way to start the day.

Today dawned in a whole new way.

I heard her stir, and went in to get her.  She looked up at my smiling face and proffered arms and stated flatly, “NO!”  This was not the reception I wanted to receive from my loving baby at 6:15 a.m.

My daughter just turned 2 ½ this week.  For a little over a month now, she’s been becoming little miss Mary Mary, Quite Contrary.  I knew it was coming – I wasn’t going to be this lucky forever.  But she’s been exercising her will pretty constantly lately, and it’s alternately amusing, irritating and oftentimes completely illogical.

Her most consistent “NO!” tirade surrounds the afternoon nap.  She’s in there right now, chattering away, wide awake despite 30 minutes of rocking on my part.  I did what the books say to do: I gave her a half-hour heads-up that the nap was forthcoming.  This only served to start the “NO!”-ing a half-hour earlier than usual.  So that was fun.  At the appointed time, I changed her diaper, gave her Snoopy, and brought her, protesting, into her room.  We fumbled about in the rocking chair, as she squirmed and giggled and poked me in the nose with her pacifier.  Finally, my back weary from holding 30 pounds of baby for 30 minutes (who says I don’t get any exercise?), I just put her in the crib, closed the door and hoped for the best.

Sometimes she’ll say “NO!” to all questions.  “I’m hungry!” she’ll wail.  “Do you want something to eat?”  I’ll ask.  “NO!” she’ll wail.  “I’m tired!” she’ll wail.  “Do you want to take a nap?”  I’ll ask.  “NO!” she’ll wail.  If she takes a tumble outside, I’ll ask “Are you OK?”  “NO!”  “Are you hurt?”  “NO!”

You get the idea.

Fortunately, I’ve pretty much narrowed down that she’s the most intransigent when she’s tired.  I know that testing limits and self-expression are normal benchmarks of development, and I am ready for them.  But will I miss this period of the battle of the wills?

Before I became a parent, I used to lie awake at night, staring at the ceiling, feeling guilty that I hadn’t accomplished anything, or enough, for the day. I recited a litany of tasks, to-do items, obligations, opportunities and should-haves that could have been addressed in the 24 hours coming to a close. It was exhausting, mentally and physically.

Now, I still lie awake at night staring at the ceiling, but I’m not usually beating myself up with The Litany. Sure, I still feel bad/annoyed about the photograph-sorting project taking up half my dining room table; and I should have weeded out my daughter’s old toys for donation long ago. But mostly, I think “She’s alive for another day. Mission accomplished.”

My current position at The Telegraph has been a great segue back into the workforce, both for myself and for my daughter. Working only 20 hrs/wk, 4 days/wk and no weekends, has allowed us both to experience and cope with separation in manageable chunks. And because I work mostly at night, we still enjoy most daylight hours together.

I used to think that if I didn’t have to work, I’d be the physical ideal I long for: I’d work out, I’d do meal planning, I’d take better care of myself overall. I’d finish that novel, I’d get stuff done.

None of these things happened when I quit work to be a mother. But on the whole, I feel a lot less guilty about it.

A few days ago, my daughter and I were lying on our backs on the deck, staring up through the new yellow-green leaves at the bright blue sky. We pointed out bugs, birds and airplanes that whizzed past. I answered her questions. I didn’t think about cleaning my bathroom floor once.

One of the gifts of parenthood is being given permission to relax and enjoy this downtime, simply hanging out and playing with your child. Because that’s your most important daily duty. The dishes will indeed get done, eventually. Go ahead and play hand-puppets with your daughter. Go collect acorns into piles of “squirrel snacks.” Draw on the bathtub with the washable crayons. Kiss and hug and jump on the bed. You can write that novel later.

I’ve been engaging in house-lust for quite some time now. My original plan (or, in light of my financial situation, ‘fantasy’) was to own a house by the time my daughter turned three, which will be at the end of this year. One of the many oaths I pledged to myself and my child before her arrival was to provide a homestead for our little family of two, no matter what. Even though I’m a single parent, I wanted to provide her with the same wonderful physical environment my parents provided my brother and me growing up.

We started with a custom-made ranch in the late ’60s.  When my brother and I hit our teens, my parents had a second floor added. What my memory-bliss revolves around, though, isn’t the house itself: it’s the area surrounding it.

We lived in a nice, middle-class neighborhood with tons of kids our age. We were out of the house for hours a day in the summertime, roaming the yards and streets with impunity and safety. No one was terrified at the thought of their children being out of their sight, in some unknown person’s house. No one chased us out of their yards or complained if we scrambled over, or under, their fences.  My brother and I knew we had to be home when we heard the downtown fire station’s horn-blast, which happened exactly at eight o’clock every night.

My favorite place, though, was the wilderness.  Our neighborhood was shaped like a comb, with tine-streets. We lived on the spine, which was only a few hundred feet from the river.  Our ample backyard gave way to forest, sloping down to the river-proper and also a small lagoon. That was my Narnia. That parcel of wilderness had everything: blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and those tiny woodland strawberries. There was the now-endangered state flower, the ladyslipper, dotting the forest floor. There were perfect climbing trees, and ones that jutted out over the water, providing a wonderful seat as you dropped your fishing line into the murky water. There were sunfish, hornpout, giant goldfish-y ones. The myriad songbirds serenaded you all day; the bullfrogs kept you up at night. There were mica-encrusted rocks to set the burgeoning rockhound’s heart afire. I couldn’t stop writing about or drawing it all.

It is obviously a deeply-romantic sentiment I have around my childhood home. But even if my experiences have been clouded by the revisionist-history of time, I still want that for my daughter. We own a nice condo now, and it too is in a safe, quiet neighborhood. But there are hardly any other children. There’s no real wilderness for her to explore. And even if there was, could I even imagine letting her wander off into it, alone? The idea makes me shudder.

It’s not too late for my plan to become actualized; there’s still half a year left. Maybe the housing market will turn around. Maybe I’ll finally see that dream house as I scour the real estate section of the paper one Sunday. Or maybe I’ll build a time machine and take my daughter back to be raised in the halcyon days of my own youth.

I won’t lie: There were jobs in my past where I would wake up in the morning, see that I was already going to be late, groan and think “What excuse could I give them today?” There were jobs that threatened if I was late once more, I’d be put on probation. So when I awoke ten minutes before clock-in time, I wouldn’t call in late – I’d call in sick. “Better late than never” was not part of their philosophy.

I was also infamous among my friends for sleeping a lot. A LOT. As in, 12 or 14 hours a whack. One day I slept 20 hours in a row. I was mocked, I was insulted. But I was well-rested.

Then I became a mother.

Mothers – single parents or not – are not allowed such luxuries as sick days and sleeping in. My toddler gets up the same time every morning, no matter what time I eventually fall asleep, or for how long. There’s no baby snooze alarm, there’s no “just another hour.” There’s no wheedling excuses for not doing your job. Get up and take care of business. End of story.

I have felt like hammered manure for ten days now. The Weather Channel reports that the pollen level is “astronomical,” and I am suffering a brutal assault. Despite a trip to the doctor and the emergency room, I am still miserable. My throat is on fire, my ears are throbbing, my sinuses are pounding. I wake up on the hour all night.

And I get up every day at 6:45 a.m. to the musical beckoning of “Mommeeeee… come get meeee…” from the other room.

Before I had a child, I used to always point out that one of the reasons I had no interest in reproducing was the locked-in finality of being a parent. You can always quit a job, get divorced, move. But man, you’re stuck with that kid! 

And it goes further. You’re stuck with that JOB. I can’t be lazy anymore (well, as much). I have eaten walnuts and canned green beans for dinner before, because I was too lazy/tired/unmotivated to cook. But I can’t do that for my daughter. I won’t. And when she wakes up, I have to get up and make her breakfast. There’s no calling out sick.

I think this is that thing I keep hearing about: “being responsible.” Glad I finally learned it – better late than never.

(With apologies to Prince for borrowing the title of his song…) 

My daughter has not as yet been afflicted with the short-attention-span menace that seems to affect so many of the younger generations.  She can still sit and stare, as if for the first time, at the same cartoons on PBS, the same “Thomas the Tank Engine” video, the same books, over and over.  Every day.

Don’t get me wrong; we buy her new stuff.  New books, new videos, new stuffed animals.  But time and again she falls back on the familiar ones, the tried-and-true rote play that seems to entertain her the most.  And while her minimalism and ease of self-entertainment is a nice concept, in reality, it makes me – and the other caregivers who have to endure the monotony – want to run screaming from the house.  As in, “if I have to watch the same Christmas-themed episode of ‘Thomas’ one more time, I’m gonna climb a clocktower with a high-powered rifle.”

I jest, of course.  Mostly.

I suppose this should be an expected downside to the mantra of “children crave routine” that’s been drilled into so many parents’ heads.  Yes, it’s nice to have a predictable framework for the day.  But when the minutiae in said framework is the same, all the time, it gets a bit hard to take for the over-2 set.  I love spending time with my daughter playing with her stuffed animals, but how many conversations can I have that are “ ‘Hello, Red Bird, how are you?’ ‘I’m fine, Ducky, how are you?’ ‘Let’s go to my house.’ ‘OK.’ ” 

She wants to play with the same blocks over and over.  She wants to go for the same walk outside.  She wants me to sing the same songs every night at bedtime.  Yes, I am glad she finds comfort and calm in these things.  And I’m certainly not worried I have a future “Rainman” on my hands.  But it will be a big change in my life when that inevitable switch is thrown and she, like most other kids, is no longer satisfied with any diversion for more than a minute.  Soon enough, the Consumerism Beast will rear its ugly head, no matter how much I try to prevent it from happening.

In the meantime, I will sing “You Are My Sunshine” for the millionth time.  I will hide the stuffed animals in the same locations.  And I will worry that I’m finding The Man in the Yellow Hat from “Curious George” strangely attractive…