"Just wait until you have a girl…" They said menacingly.

I scoffed.

They declared, "Girls are so much harder than boys at that age."

I pshawed.

"Ooh, is she ever going to give you trouble when she's in the terrible two’s," they predicted.

I stroked my sweet, curly headed beauty and shushed them.

I suppose "they" didn’t realize that I am a seasoned veteran of the "terrible two’s"--a huge misnomer since that horrendous toddler period actually lasts from about 16 months to 4, when your sweet little baby becomes a whirling dervish of "no!", "mine!" and spilled sippy cup messes.

I have seen 2 1/2.

I have stared into its juice-stained face and lived to tell about it.

I ate 2 1/2 for breakfast with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

I have two bottle-weaned, potty-trained, contributing male members of elementary school society to prove my past successes.

Ha! In fact, 2 1/2 is going to be so much easier with a girl, because I am one! I know what girls like. I know how they think. There will be no additional research required, like memorizing every NHL roster and GPA stats or learning where the cheat codes are for PS2 games. I am so all over this girl 2 1/2 thing, I can just spend the next couple of years at the spa and going on morning talk shows as a parenting expert.

I apologize to both Fate and my mother for such reckless and arrogant lunacy. Please make it stop now.

When she was swaddled in her pink blanket smelling of lavender and goodness, I thought Baby Diva and I would spend years in feminine camaraderie. That because we were cut from the same cloth (a nice magenta silk with a touch of sequined trim) we would be in perfect unison in mind, body and spirit. I would dress her in those adorable pink frilly dresses that adorned the shop windows with nary a drooling dinosaur nor mud-caked monster truck on them. We would talk endlessly whenever something bothered her--she would tell me how she felt, rather than close up into a tortuous silence like the boys. She would be rational (at least to me) and would respond to my unique female logic. And if all that failed, at least she would be appeased by an Appletini and a pair of good shoes.

That isn’t exactly how her toddler years are going.

Somehow, my idyllic mother-daughter plan has gone unheeded--just like every other word, command, request, scream, plea and tearful frustrated prayer I have uttered. Her normal 2 1/2 year old tantrums are amplified because their cause is neither obvious, logical nor tangible. Today, I got a 20 minute dissertation--relayed exclusively in breathless sobs--over the incomprehension at being stopped from squirting an entire bottle of baby lotion onto the carpet.

And those adorable outfits she was supposed to be dressed in while we dined on herbal tea and cucumber sandwiches? Another cruel hoax on my maternal fantasies. This child strips down to a tan line and a smile at every opportunity. There are some weeks when I do the laundry that I find there has not been a single outfit she has worn. The bottom of her hamper stares up at me and says, "You are a failure as a mother." And she’s allergic to cucumbers.

Some days, the only sweet thing about her is the sticky Tootsie pop that is hanging from her curls. There is no meeting of the minds here, just the beating of my head against a wall. When the boys made their mess, it was just like every other male mess--dropping whatever it was they were occupied with on the floor in front of them waiting for the Mommy fairy to come by and clean it up. Baby Diva’s messes are one big Fear Factor dare for me to clean. How in the hell do I remove the marshmallow breading she has coated herself in?

They said that boys were made of snips and snails and puppy dog tails and girls of sugar, spice and everything nice.

What they didn’t mention was that mothers of 2 1/2 year old girls need to be made of rosary beads, Maalox and garlic necklaces.

©2006 Tracey Henry