We’re halfway through two in our house and I just have to say, if you’re in the thick of new-baby fog: it gets loads better.  There are so many little delights that come with a two-year-old, so many marvels that never make it into the milestone books.

The fact that my daughter thinks a cup of sour cream is just as good as a cup of ice cream.

Her insistence that every night she dreams of me. (“What did you dream of last night?” “Mama!”)

Car rides aren’t full of desperate screams anymore.  Instead, she listens to my audiobooks with me, or asks for music, and sings along to Regina Spektor quite happily.

Her level of understanding that I will be right back if I say I’m going to do laundry.

Her ability to play and read quietly in her room in the morning before I come get her.  Pure magical hearts in my eyes over this new development milestone.

The fact that the dog crate in our kitchen is, she believes and happily insists despite all evidence to the contrary, where I go to work each day.  I haven’t quite figured that one out…but sure kid, all workday life is kind of like being a wild caged animal?

Her sheer delight in watching the garbage men rumble up in their truck every Tuesday.

It’s delightful and crazy-making at the same time.  For example, there are the small preferences that suddenly have bloomed which I didn’t know about until just now, like when her dislike of hot cocoa suddenly turned into a love of it!  Or learning that her favorite color is yellow.  Or that for some strange reason she really likes The Princess Bride, even though the only reason she’s seen it is because it was on one day when she was brought downstairs after her nap and we finished watching it, and I’m positive she doesn’t understand what’s going on even though she begs to watch it right along with Peppa Pig.

Having an infant was exhausting, and having a toddler doubly-so!  But being able to watch a whole little person emerge from the cloak of infanthood has been the sweetest experience of my life.  When people post pictures of fresh brand-new babies, all I can think is, who is that little person hiding in there?  Whose little face will that turn into, whose personality is waiting to come out?

I fear I’m turning into one of those people who stops new mothers and says conspiratorially, “It all goes by so fast, enjoy it!”  I don’t want to be that person but oh, it goes by so fast.  But then I look at my little girl and the tiny person she’s become, and I’m profoundly happy rather than melancholy.  So enjoy your new babies if you’re enjoying them, but know too that the little people they’ll become can be so much more fun, more charming, more confounding and complex.  Babies are great and all, but the following year’s model can be pretty fabulous too.