A Disconcerting Afternoon.

As far back as I can remember, Taylor has always been a little autonomous: choosing her own toys, choosing her own day and nightwear, putting on her own shoes, brushing her teeth, and regulating her sleep schedule to match Adrianne’s work schedule, but recently she has been acting a lot more independently. I’ve enjoyed watching her slowly take control of herself and her environment, little by little, milestone by milestone, word for word. There is an indescribable pride, like catching a pass and running 50 yards to score six points at one’s homecoming football game or creating a work of art with one’s own hands and having it recognized by fellow artisans, watching your children grow and steadily develop their unique personalities through both trial and error and those experiences which you’ve help create, like trips to the beach. Today, however, of all those days and of all those minor acts of independence and all those positive and negative experiences she has had in the last twenty-eight months, Taylor’s extreme self-reliance has confounded, bewildered, and even scared me.

Looking back, her daylong pedantic independence began last night. During her bath time she refused to let me wash her. She wanted to pour the bathwater over her own arms using the “green cup;” she wanted to put her own soap on “ba, ba, pants” (her name for sponges); and she wanted to wash the soap off all by herself. So this morning, at 6 a.m. to be exact, much too early to “go downstairs” as she requested, it didn’t surprise me when she refused my hand and climb into bed to catch a few more z’s before Simon awoke. What did surprise me is waking up 45 minutes later to finding her sleeping on the floor with one leg draped over the top of the clothes basket at the foot of our bed while dozing full-length on one of Adrianne’s pillows she had pulled to the floor. Little did I know that this behavior, the distancing and utterly complete independence from Dad, was only the beginning … the proverbial tip of the iceberg for the remainder of the morning and most of the afternoon.

On an average day one kid wakes about 30 to 60 minutes before the other. Lately, Taylor wakes before Simon. Our routine together, before heading downstairs, has been to pick out her day clothes, go downstairs, get changed, eat, and read together until Simon wakes. We then both go upstairs and get Simon changed and dressed for the day. I carry Simon down the stairs and I usually help Taylor walk down the stairs by holding onto her hand. Today, however, Taylor emphatically told me, “T no hold Dadda hand.” Strange, I thought, coupled with this morning’s nap on the bedroom floor, but it was nothing too crazy or too out of the ordinary, yet.

I was a little perplexed and concerned, although, when, two hours later, she didn’t tell me she had pooped. Adrianne and I have been working towards potty training her for some time now. We know Taylor is getting close to starting potty training because she usually tells us right after she makes a mess in her diaper. So I was dumbfounded to find poop smeared all over her bottom, meaning she had walked around and sat in feces for a while without whispering a word to me. I was even more troubled when she began screaming that her legs hurt when I was changing her, “Dadda hands hurt T legs.” I know that she has been going through a growth spurt these last two weeks, she’s eating everything in sight, she’s grown out of her 2T and 3T clothing, and her legs, my God!, have gotten so long. But I cannot remember the last time she felt pain anywhere on her body to the touch.

At the playground down the street she continued to voice her self-reliance and new-found confidence in herself: “T no hold Dadda hand,” over the rough terrain separating the sandbox from the swing set; “T no hold Dadda hand [down the] slide;” and “T no hold Dadda hand [on the] doggy [ride].” Monotonous? Yes. Fascinating? Yes. A cause for concern? No. But the pattern of shunning Dad’s help before it was even offered did start to get a little annoying.

As one may guess, Taylor’s independence lasted the remainder of the morning. She wanted to take out and use the bubble machine, alone, hold the soap bubble bottle by herself, and walk around the yard instead of riding in her push car. No problem, I thought. She’s just expressing herself.

By noon both kids were exhausted. Spending over an hour at the park and another hour outside in the yard had tuckered them out to the point of shear burnout. Simon could barely walk without tripping; his face was placid; and his eyes had “a deer in the headlights look” to them. It was, unquestionably, naptime for Simon. Our normal routine (Taylor’s and mine) for putting him to bed is for Taylor to come upstairs with us, turn on his wave sound machines, turn on his Fisher Price monitor, and gather two pillows of her choice from Mom and Dad’s bed to bring downstairs while I feed Simon. I’ve given up trying to put her to bed upstairs. Sadly, I’ve succumbed to allowing her to sleep downstairs on the living room floor. I know that someday I will pay for this allowance, but for now the concession works, Taylor naps. This afternoon, however, she barely had the energy to drag the pillows down the hallway from Mom and Dad’s room into Simon’s. And instead of throwing them down the stairs like she normally does, she passed out two steps into Simon’s room.

Simon, as anticipated, fell asleep. That’s when it happened.

While leaning over to pick Taylor up and carry her downstairs, I must have scared her from her slumber. Like a fullback barreling through the offensive line’s three hole, she sprang to her feet, forced herself between Simon’s crib and his ash dresser, and crashed her right arm and shoulder into a wrought iron dresser handle. The pain was immediate and intense. Simon’s reactions to Taylor’s screams were just as alarming, he wailed louder than any child should– frightened, shocked, and bewildered as to why his big sister was bawling beside his bedside.

I made a split second decision to take Taylor downstairs, calm her down as quickly as I could, and return to Simon’s room to comfort him before laying him back down for his overdue afternoon nap. Looking back, I truly was in a pickle. No matter which course I took– calming Taylor first or attempting to calm Simon first¬ or trying to calm Taylor in Simon’s room or attempt to calm Simon with Taylor screaming next to her– nothing would have worked better than what I did, I’m sure of it, I think. The unexpected consequences of bringing Taylor downstairs and leaving her there to tend to Simon, however, stabbed me through the heart.

I think Taylor felt abandoned. All day long she wanted her independence from me, but I was always by her side when she demanded it from me. This time, however, I think that in her time of need, justly or not, she still wanted her independence from me, so long as I held her in my arms while she cried her fears away. She just could not recognize that she was physically all right and Simon, because of being woken up so abruptly, wasn’t. He needed immediate comforting.

Thankfully, Simon calmed down after I picked him up and held him for a couple of minutes. Taylor, despite my hastily return downstairs, vigorously evaded me with fervor. At every advance Taylor repeated, “Dadda no touch T.” I was crushed.

For the next two hours Taylor shunned my very presence. If I walked into the room, she walked out. If I walked near her, she hid in a corner. My baby wanted nothing to do with me. In her eyes, compounded by exhaustion, muscle fatigue, and a sore shoulder, I had failed to be there when she needed me most. I felt sick to my soul.

Talking to her was useless. Comforting her was impossible. I gave her space, lots of it.

I worked in the office; I worked in the kitchen; I even re-did the dishes. In time, I caught a couple of glimpses of Taylor looking around the corner for me. Eventually, she asked to go outside and allowed me to push her around the yard in her Step 2 car and hand her a couple of freshly bloomed flowers by the stream. We didn’t say a word to one another, but I felt the tension was slowly breaking down, to my relief.

An hour later Adrianne returned from work. It was like a magical button had been pushed: all the animosity and all the avoiding disappeared– everything was back to normal. Taylor was laughing, playing, and she even jumped on Daddy’s lap as she played with her mother and me. By bedtime, Taylor was sitting on my left thigh and Simon sat on my right as we read book after book after book together. I guess Mommies do make everything better.

It has been several days since this incident happened and my stomach still turns in knots over it. I thought I did everything right. I thought I made the best decision. I thought … I thought … I thought. Sometimes there is no right decision. Sometimes no matter which decision one makes he or she will be wrong. I think in this case, however, my strong relationship with Taylor will smooth over this little bump in the road of our lives and all will soon be forgotten, except by me.