Age Two: Getting Past the Edge of the Bed

This is Day 2 of the October Memoir and Backstory Blog Challenge, which is something about a 2 year old.  To catch more on this, please visit  Jane Ann McLachlan.


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"Oh boy!"

She woke up and had a quick thought.  "Oh!"

The little two-year old toddler hurriedly threw the blankets back, sun-drenched room bright.  Her orange night-light was still on, for some reason, and the checkered red sheets spoke of things colored and happy.

Her dark green pajamas were those kind with a zipper and feet, padded on the bottom with that sticky pad kind of stuff.  Rolling over on her stomach, she positioned her body so that it was perpendicular to the bed.  She meticulously laid her head on the middle of the bed, then scooted her legs so they flipped over the edge of the bed.  This was the challenge of the day:  to get past the edge of the bed.  To get to greater things that were unseen.

She laid on her belly first, then grabbed onto the bedsheets with her little hands clenched tightly.  Her feet dangled over the edge, now her knees were on the edge.  One hand loosened grip and moved closer to the edge, too.  Her hips pushed on the edge of the bed.  Now both fists were white at the knuckles.   Slowly, ever so slowly, she let gravity pull her down.  The edge of the bed was at her belly now.  Her feet swung from the bed, and they inched down.

"Uh!  Uh!"  She grunted as her eyes looked at her own back.  She looked backwards so hard that her eyes hurt.  It was morning again and she just had to do it!  "Uh!"  She couldn't wait!  She had to get out of this bed!

"Bam!"  Her feet hit the floor, and she went tumbling overboard.  "Uh!"  Her body was going upward now, picking herself up.  She was glad to be off the bed, at least.  This was progress.

Quickly, she picked herself up and started running.  But she fell again.  She had been in forward motion, and her body lost control and pitched forward.   "Boom!"

"Uh!"  She was sprawled out with her hands before her, elbows down.  She struggled a bit.  "Uh!"  Wiggled this way and that, grunting as she lifted herself again.   At last, she was on her padded feet again.

"Mama!  Where?"  Her eyes searched left and right, right and left as she made her way out of the sun-soaked room.  Into the hallway she went, scrunching her eyes to adjust to the dark hallway.

She looked under the bookcase.  She peered under the chair.  She searched.  She pouted.  Nothing was there.

Then she had a thought.  "Outside!"

She toddled over to the back door, hands smearing another set of handprints on the glass window.   "Oh boy!"  She smiled.   Relief.  Bliss.  Now she could play.

Her eyes widened as she saw them together.  The brother and sister cats were licking themselves in the sun, bellies up, no care in the world.  She thought they were little people stuck inside of a cat's body.  One was Fluffy, and one was Mattie.  Today she would put them in her blue bucket, then put them on her slide.  They would slide down the slide, and she would laugh.

She would do this over and over again, just like yesterday.

There was nothing else that she wanted to do.

That's all she wanted, and that's what the whole day was all about.

That's it.