Yesterday morning, Ishaan and I were standing in the kitchen. He was saying the word “baby” over and over again. I looked down at him and said, “Where’s the baby Ishu? Where’s the baby?”

He immediately turned around, ran into our room, and pointed at the mirror.

“Baby,” he says.

I mean, he’s not wrong. There’s a baby in the mirror when he looks into it.

His little brain keeps on growing, keeps on absorbing, keeps on learning.

I was telling a friend the other day that this is SUCH a fun age. She has a little guy a few years older than Ishaan. She responded, “Just you wait. It gets better and better!”

When Ankur and I were driving back from Newport Beach on Sunday, Ishaan had fallen asleep in the back. We were running through the list of to-dos for the week. The things we needed to get done before leaving for Chicago.

Ankur smiled and threw up his hands and said, “Gah. Whose idea was it to have a baby anyway?!”

I laughed and thought back to our trip – just the two of us – across country to Tennessee back in 2016. “Seriously. This trip is a gajillion times harder now that we’ve got him in tow.”

Ankur agreed and added, “It’s crazy. Kids make everything SO much harder. Anything else that would make life that much harder and more challenging, we’d find a way to get rid of it. But kids make things so hard and yet we want them around.”

I responded, “Agreed. I feel anxious and overwhelmed at times and I’m so tired, but if I could snap my fingers and get my old life back – without him – I would never do it.”

He is a bad sleeper. A super fast toddler that can get his hands onto anything in less than 2 seconds. And his shit will take up ALL the suitcases come Sunday.

But he’s the most most most most fun. He likes to “pound it” – bringing his fist to other peoples’ fists. And then when they pull their fist back and make a sound with their mouth while spreading their fingers wide, he watches so intently. And then signs and says, “mo, mo, mo,” asking for you to do it all over again.

Recently, he started walking backwards. Unintentionally. And the first few times it happened, he cried because he didn’t know how to stop. So he’d either bump into something or fall back on his butt. And then he’d burst into tears.

Our little drunk toddler.

He’s the most exhausting, most challenging, yet most fun addition to our lives.