I recently went back and re-read part two of this Fatherhood series and reflexively tilted my head to the side and thought “aww.. what a sweet boy. I remember that doe-eyed, lovestruck simpleton I used to be. What a kind soul he was” and so on.

Well, that shit is over. I’m just as in love with my daughter (Ivy) as I’ve been since the day she was born but I have also (figuratively) been to war with a maniacal sociopath for the past year-plus (she’s now 2.5 years old). It’s truly amazing how much she has changed and how much the dynamic has shifted from taking care of her to preemptory maneuvers, containment, and fallout management.

Believe it or not my first inkling of a change in her was when she started laughing at her own farts. In a vacuum it’s tough to think of amused flatulence as a sign of intelligence but the first time it happened, I had the realization she was recognizing a sound her body made that was unexpected, different from other sounds, and objectively humorous on an auditory level. It was situational recognition that she hadn’t had before. And from there the intelligence continued to blossom into the recognition of patterns, items and pictures, and onto the usage of multiple-word phrases, then full sentences.

One of my favorite phrases came at the expense of my brother, RJ, who recurringly feels the brunt of Ivy’s injustices. We were having dinner at his house and Ivy had come to the end of her portion of mac & cheese. To ask for some more, many kids her age would have said: “more daddy” or even have simply made the sign language gesture for “more.” Not Ivy. My little girl (who adores her uncle, btw) said, commandingly: “RJ! Cheese!”

It was gloriously hilarious. But even since then her communication has advanced so far – to the point where most of it comes in the form of properly structured sentences.

Some examples include:

• “I want some chocolate.”
• “I can swim like a whale.”
• “That’s a great idea, Daddy.
  “It’s coronation day.” And so on.

But with that growth in intelligence also comes the capacity for dishonesty, sneakiness and downright malice – tendencies of which mom and I have to do our best to snuff out. It can be as simple as that thing all toddlers do where they hold an object above their head in an obvious pre-launch motion, then look straight into your soul and indeed launch that shit despite all of your verbalized protests you know she fully understands now. Or, when she senses bedtime is approaching and peppers me with a barrage of questions aimed at distracting me and thus prolonging her awake time. Questions such as:

Believe it or not, all of the aforementioned shenanigans still fall into the realm of utter adorability, but as I write this, I am squarely out of that farcical realm all parents inhabit for the first 2 years of their child’s life, within which the belief is that everything your child does will be endearing, now and forever. Nope. No sir. No ma’am. In fact, there was a week when my wife was traveling for work and it happened to fall at the same time Ivy was sick and had to stay home from daycare for several days, so I had to work from home and take care of her. The first day was a breeze since she had a fever and was all lethargic and cuddly. But the next day she was basically back at 100% but still needed to be home due to health protocols at her daycare. It was that day when I first had the thought, “Oh.. this is why people choose violence.”

There’s only so much outright disobedience the adult mind can bear. When a child looks you in the eye and smiles through her own malice (at your expense), well, it’s almost like children have synthesized a new, more potent, strain of disrespect. I hope to (and am on pace to) go through my entire dadship without striking my child, but I get it. I get it.

And, finally… a warning. What I’m now able to warn parents of not-yet-toddlers about is that when their child’s intelligence marries up with a specific physical event – that’s when the parenting war really begins. That very specific and dreadful event is this: when your toddler can run faster than you can walk.

Listen to me carefully. Your child is now smart, curious, developmentally sociopathic and quite fast. Prepare for battle.

Verdict: Incomplete (but I’m surviving)