So how’s this for an encouraging statement from the pediatrician:

“Yeah, its looking like you are going to have to get that verbal discipline thing down pretty quicklike. At this rate, she is going to be able to take you down by the time she’s 5.”

Nice.

It has really taken me a long time to realize that physically, Stella really is larger than your average 18-month-old. As of yesterday’s weigh-in she is tipping the scales at roughly 30 lbs and towering at close to 3 feet. I just don’t pay attention to it that much. I see her around other kids, but never really compare her to them, I am too busy enjoying that fact that I am not the one having to entertain her. The part that is so deceiving is that, overall, she is pretty well proportioned. Aside from her cute little buddha-belly, she is a lean ball of muscle. [You can thank your daddy and his genes for this, Stella. Just be thankful Mommy didn’t pass on her Flinstone gene to you.]

Aside from the usual recording of stats, and administering of a lovely tetanus shot, we spent the majority of the visit discussing a certain someone’s ‘volatile nature’. I sheepishly admitted that I brought Stella in to see one of the other doctors a month or so back when it all started, thinking that there was actually something physically wrong. There had to be. How could she have gone from precious to goblin in one day? So, she diligently checked Stella’s ears, poked the usual spots, asked the obvious questions: “Is she teething? Sleeping okay? Any major changes in the household?” Aside from the fact that our entire house was currently turned inside out (literally), there was nothing else out of the ordinary I could think of that would cause my otherwise easy-going kid to turn into a demon overnight. By the end, all she could write down as diagnosis was ‘Tantrums, Teething’. I told her how much I appreciated that she at least added that ‘teething’ part so I didn’t look like a complete idiot. Great. So it is just who she is now.

In my conversations with Stella’s regular pediatrician she (a new mother herself) was supportive and empathetic (one of the reasons I adore her), and confirmed that our approach was good: distract her, walk away from her, have that 3rd glass of wine . It’s all okay. Really. Then she said something that totally made me laugh.

“Don’t worry about long explanations and reasoning right now. You can just use caveman speak to get the point across in a basic way.”

“Oh, you mean my husband’s approach of pointing out an item, explaining it’s scientific name, origin, its use in both ancient and current society and whether or not she can eat it isn’t necessary at 18-months?”

I think it took her a second to realize I wasn’t kidding. That this is Stella’s reality. She won’t just learn the word fan. She will also learn about angular velocity. She won’t just learn how to point out about a ladybug, she’ll learn that they are important because they eat aphids. She won’t just be able to point out the microwave, she’ll be told how the microwave actually heats the water in the food and, subsequently, about the process of heat transfer. She will not only be able to point out an animal, but identify whether or not we eat it (like when she points to a cow and says YUMMY!)

“So unless, caveman-speak is anything like nerd-speak, I don’t know if that will work in our house.”

Sorry Stella, you have no chance for normalcy. Embrace it. You have no other choice.