A New Kid in Town

The Toddler has outgrown his name.

A toddler is, by definition, one who toddles. Toddle means to walk unsteadily – that funky Frankenstein walk that little creatures between the ages of one and three do.

The Toddler just turned three, and for the past year and a half, I've been writing about him. And when I've written about him, he's always been The Toddler.

They grow so fast. It seems like it was just yesterday that he was crawling. Then came those first steps. Then those first words. And all of a sudden, he's no longer a toddler. He's the kid that you once were.

On the eve of Father's Day, just two weeks after his third birthday, he wanted his toddler bed removed. He wanted it out of his room. If he was going to go to sleep, it wasn't going to be in a toddler bed. It was as if he knew that he wasn't a toddler any more. So Mommy and Daddy picked it up that night and took it out of the room. He slept on his mattress without the toddler bed frame.

The Toddler stopped toddling some time ago. Actually, he stopped walking. It wasn't that he couldn't walk. Thankfully, he has two fully functional lower extremities. He had learned, however, that there is an easier way of getting around than walking. All he had to do was hitch a ride on one of two buses: The Mommy Express or The Daddy Express.

"Up, Daddy," he cries.

I look down at this little creature with his outstretched arms and pleading eyes and tell him, "No. You can walk. You've got two legs, just like Daddy."

"No, want up," he rebels. I try to move but he's now attached to the bottom of my leg. "Up!"

With a sigh and a shake of my head, I scoop him up and he settles into the little monkey position in my arms.

"Go to video store, Daddy," he says, the tears now replaced with a smile.

The dust kicked up by The Toddler is still thick in the air. But the clock has struck three, and there's a new kid in town. He's just a little quicker on the draw than the cowboy he's replaced. We call him, simply, The Kid.