A Toddler's Birthday Tantrum

Look at you, Pet-a-poo. Crying your eyes out. Mommy tries to snap a picture of you on this night of your second birthday, but all you want to do is grapple the camera away from her. Tears are coursing down your miserable face, and runners of snot are dripping down your nose.


Do let up, 'pet. It's your birthday.


This morning you woke us up inhumanly early, raining kisses down on random body parts and grounding your chin down where you kissed. You left us groaning and ill-tempered on this blessed dawn while you chuckled and burrowed through the blankets and bared our warm limbs to the too cool morning air.


Tatay finally got up and asked you if you wanted to go for a ride. "Come!" You squealed, lifting your arms up imperioiusly. Manong Woog roused himself too, and the three of you left Mommy in peaceful blissful sleep.


Downstairs you continued to shriek, "Car! Brooom-brooom! Go....go!" Mommy had hopes that Tatay would bring you to Church for a birthday prayer, but he brought you to the market to buy coffee instead. In your 'jamies. With a full to bursting diapy.


(Doesn't matter to Tatay where he brings you, or what state he brings you in. As long as he gets his supply of heady caffeine, then all is right with the world).


But you are happy and you come home excited from your foray into the realm of native coffee beans, chattering incoherently to the neighbors about your grand adventure. And then not a few hours later, we leave for work and school, and you are in tears again. Poor 'pet. Bewildered each day as your nearest and dearest abandon you for long stretches of time. No wonder you are in a constant itch to go out and explore.


Look at you now. Night has fallen and you are in your 'jamies again. Your universe has shrunk to a minute space where you and Mommy engage in a tug-of-war with the camera. You are wailing piteously, turning your face up into the sky as if to ask, why? Why do I have to suffer such injustice? You look exactly the way you did two years ago at this exact same time: a yowling bundle of pug nose and fish lips, inconsolable at being pulled out from your warm watery home.

Poor 'pet. You are channeling your newly two-year-old self in a tantrum of great dimensions. Your own personal version of picketing at the roadside with a huge placard of protest for being left at home.


If only I can make you understand why we have to go away to work each day. And as I try to explain, you reject each placating offer of Tatay's laser pointer, a story book, and Manong Woog's fancy red ruler. Tatay finally puts Enya on and I twirl you around to Orinocco Flow. You settle down then, head deep in my shoulder, arms holding me tight. Music to soothe the savage beast. You have missed me, it seems, but never more so than I.


I hand you over to Tatay and you dance with him too, a sliver of a smile peeking from your lips and flaring your too damp nose. We wish things were different, that we could spend whole days with you as you grow. But for now we settle for waltzing away your hurt and sulk. Anything to put a smile on your face again.

Ah, good. You are laughing once more, shaking your hands to a Celtic beat. But you keep your arms tight around our necks, unwilling to let go. For now.

Because you are newly two and we are your whole world. It would be nice to keep it that way for as long as we can.

Happy birthday, 'pet.

Just so you know. You are our whole world, too.