Me vs. The Two-Year Molars

The two-year molars are killing me dead, people. 

Fairly soon I'll voluntarily commit myself to the psychiatric ward and the head shrink will scribble "two-year molars" on my chart. The nurses cluck their tongues sympathetically and give me extra drugs. I'll be in there so long my husband will tire of waiting for me and cite "two-year molars" on the divorce papers. The two-year molars are going to RUIN MY LIFE.

We've been dealing with their onset for what? Seventy-four years now? I remember it being bad with Jack, bad enough that I've been confident telling friends that teething was horrible until I met the Two-Year Molars and only THEN did I know the havoc teething really wrought. But it did go away. We did get our sleeps-through-the-night relatively cheerful child back. (Then Three hit - that's an entirely different story.) 

It's been harder with Molly. I think because she's never given us much trouble in the sleeping-through department. For a while there it was difficult putting her down and yes, there was many an angsty blog post about that, but she's been doing so well for so long. She was the kid who WANTED to go to bed! Who literally DOVE IN! 

But for weeks now Molly's been a beast. A cute one, for sure, but MAN does she have the 'Tude. Everything makes her cry, and the stuff that's always made her bawl just makes her bawl harder. Her brother is the meanest person alive. If she has her hair washed she might die. And if she doesn't get to open the backyard gate all by herself, she knows where the Activate Nuclear War button is located and she totally knows how to push it.  

Bedtime, of course, is a real treat. She doesn't WANT to go to bed. And if you've managed to convince her that it is, indeed, time for bed, she then rolls out her list of conditions: particular toys, particular books, this blankie, that blankie, drink of water, can't find her pacifier, wants MOOOOOZIK! Sometimes one or a combination of those things gets her back down and asleep. Sometimes she just wants to be held. For hoooouuuurrrrsss. Need I remind you this is the child who has fallen asleep in my arms maybe twice the entire time I've known her? 

What's REALLY fun is when she wakes up in the middle of the night and we have to do the process all over again. This is where Phillip and I have our usual Our Lives Are Miserable And What Are We Going To Do About It argument. (I highly recommend fighting at 2am. Your best selves really come out!) See, we are on two sides of a very large Philosophical Divide. Phillip thinks we can do something about it, I think we can't. We can't cry out the two-year molars. We can't train her out of them. I thrust my fingers into Molly's mouth and feel around for the tell-tale bumps and shriek, "It's the TWO-YEAR MOLARS! What can we DOOOOO?!"

NOTHING. The answer is nothing. The answer is buy stock in Tylenol and Motrin, cross your fingers and hope for the best. One day we'll get our sweet little girl back, one day we'll go to bed knowing we won't be wide awake between two and four am. One day we can get rid of the extra crib mattress on the floor beside my side of the bed. One day we'll re-engineer this whole teeth-growing process because SERIOUSLY, whoever thought of randomly sprouting rock-hard, blunt, enameled lumps in one's mouth at or around age two is FIRED.