Sophie sits on my lap watching her favorite show, Word World, and I bury my face in her soft, sweet-smelling hair. She absentmindedly reaches back and grabs a thick lock of my hair and grips it tightly. She doesn’t let go.

I drag my fingertips lightly across her little baby belly, back and forth, back and forth. She doesn’t respond, just grips my hair and chants along with the characters on Word World. But when I stop tickling her tummy, she lets go of my hair to grab my hand and puts it back on her belly – still not taking her eyes off the TV.

I giggle and kiss her soft cheek as I tickle her again. She smooshes her face closer to mine, I breathe in that sweet clean-smell hair again, give her butterfly kisses on those angelic cheeks, and think to myself, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”

I know I have perhaps devoted too much time to my Sophie-girl’s terrible two’s, but the girl confounds me. And blogging about it is cathartic, so until you beg me to stop, or Emily forces me to, here is another tale in the Sophie chronicles.

Monday at both lunch and dinner Sophie refused to eat her fruit, and was rewarded both times with a post-meal time-out in her crib. At the end of said time-outs, I said, “Tell Mommy you’re sorry.” She just looked at me and grinned and spoke the Hindu language at which she is so fluent. “Sophie, tell me you’re sorry,” I demanded more firmly.

More I’m-so-cute-babble.

Infuriating!

You see, Sophie doesn’t talk all that much, but she can say a good 75ish words and phrases, one of which is “Sorry.” If she falls down, or bumps into something, she says, “Oops, sowee.” It’s very cute. But it’s not cute when she CAN say and she SHOULD say it and she WON’T say it.

She wouldn’t, and didn’t, and tired and frazzled at the end of the day, I didn’t know what to do. I felt like a total failure and Sophie’s lack of repentance hurt my feelings and reduced me to tears.

That was Monday. One of my friends who’s thinking about quitting her job to become a stay-at-homer asked me how I liked being at home. “Well, I love it most of the time, ” I said, “but sometimes, like today, Sophie makes me want to go get a job at McDONALD’s just to get away!” (She asked me to be brutally honest!)

Thankfully, she was a pretty sweet girl the rest of the week. Then yesterday, Sunday morning, I wasn’t feeling too well, so Bobby got up with the kids and let me sleep in. But when he got Sophie out of her bed, she wasn’t satisified. “See Mommy?” she asked. So Bobby brought her into my bedroom where she immediately adhered herself to my side. “Hi, Mommy, ohh Mommy,” she said sweetly as she snuggled into me. After a minute or two, Bobby tried to get her to go with him, but each time he tried, she just burrowed herself closer to me. I was loving it.

“It’s ok,” I said. “Just come back for her in awhile.”

So Sophie and I snuggled there on my bed for a good half an hour. She stroked my hair and patted my cheek and pressed her little face up against mine. Occasionally she’d decide we weren’t close enough and lay on top of me for a minute or two. It was so, so sweet. Just us, no entertainment, no snack, nothing but mommy and daughter and snuggles.

Once again she reduced me to tears. But in a good way this time.

Such a duplicitous little booger!