Driving home from school the other night, Toby was telling me that his classmate Jay was nice to him that day. (There’s ongoing drama over whether Jay is his best friend that day or hits him and takes his toys. Welcome to preschool social life.)

“It prithed me, Momma,” Toby said. Cue the guessing as to what “prithed” meant. They don’t tell you in the mommy books that 90% of toddlerhood is spent frantically trying to solve the mystery of a lisped, mangled new word in their vocabulary as the 3-year-old tornado in 2T becomes increasingly infuriated at your stupidity. “PRITHED, MOM.”

“Prized?”

“NO, Thurprized.”

Surprised!!! When did he learn THAT word, and how to use it correctly in context? Who is this kid? When did he learn to evaluate a reaction to a social interaction like this?

All the Scary Mommy articles talk of ‘what they don’t tell you about the realities of motherhood,’ and all those kitschy truths they list are right, but GOD the biggest thing, the biggest secret about this motherhood thing, is how ephemeral it is. Every day, they’re different. Every. Day. He becomes a new person, one who can skip, one who uses “surprised” in a sentence, one who takes 20 minutes to pick what shirt he’s going to wear in the morning. Every day, decisions and tasks that were all mine to do to keep him alive, he takes over. And it happens so slowly that all of a sudden, your burbling blob who happily ingested anything in reach tells you he doesn’t like the spice on the salmon filet.

It’s such an odd push/pull, the twinges of sadness at the versions of him lost combined with the anticipation of seeing what future adaptations of him might become. I am firmly one and done, but I can see how this process can become addictive.