In the latest saga of Toddler Finds Out She Has a Personality, Abby’s turned to placing her order at meal times.

Or, well, attempting to.

She used to sit in her chair and devour – inhale, even – anything we put her way. Green beans, squash,  apples and chicken – all the basic toddler foods. She couldn’t get enough, and she’d push her plate away from her when it was empty and, mouth full of food, request “more, please.”

Oh, how I weep for my lost dinnertime routine of pick out whatever I feel like and cut it into tiny pieces and expect she’ll eat it sans complaints. Oh. Moment of silence.

We’re trying to remain steadfast: I place Lucy in her Fast table chair (which I love because it gives my 8-month-old front-row seats to the drama that unfolds in front of her while she just sits and dangles her legs and babbles), Abby climbs into her chair and we buckle her in, pass her a sippy cup and wait to play “oh yes, you will try a bite.”

“What we goin’ eat today?” she asks from her chair, arms crossed.

And the stage is set for one of two scenes: collapse and sob, or angrily sulk and not eat. When I sit down beside Lucy to begin spooning her all the pureed foods her sister used to eat, I try to wager with myself which it’ll be.

“What’re we going to eat? It’s a surprise.” And I’m the creative one. A “surprise”? Yes, this really is my best work, how did you know?

“I no like surprise. I want somefing else. I want macaroni.”

“It’s Max and Ruby burgers and superhero corn.” (Hey, jazzed-up names work for most kids’ cereals, I reasoned.)

“I no want burgers and corn. I want somefing else.”

“Well, hamburgers is what we’re eating. I’m sorry to hear that.” Lucy watches on, usually smiling or gumming the side of her Fast chair, the perfect picture of contented eating.

Dave chimes in, trying to be helpful but instead declaring battle. “What do you want then, Abby?”

“No,” I whisper. “This is what we’re eating. She doesn’t get a choice.”

“She has to eat something,” Dave says as I follow him into the other room.

“She’s an American child raised on fruit snacks and granola bars with chocolate chips in them. She won’t starve, I promise!” I whisper.

“OK! We’re eating hamburgers, Abby,” he calls to her.

“Superhero hamburgers!” I clarify.

“No! I wan’ Max and Ruby hamburgers!”

Win!

“Why would you want to find out? It’s such a cool surprise,” one mom said.

“I highly recommend not finding out the gender,” another said as we stood around a table at a moms’ meeting, eating cookies and chatting.

“I found out with my first but I don’t think I want to with my next one.”

Then, out of nowhere, I burst “I found out with both mine, and I’ll find out next time, too. I can’t stand not knowing.” And I kept on eating my cookie.

My friends stopped. “’Next time’?”

“Yeah, you’re pretty bipolar about this whole third child thing,” another said.

“I meant, like, IF I have another,” I stumbled. Oops.

There’s no point in losing sleep over wondering about the wisdom of creating someone else, a whole new person to ruin my sleep cycle and throw tantrums in public and absolutely break my heart when she says (or he, I suppose) “Mama my favorite.” But, I do anyhow. Is anyone demanding an answer here? No. But I’m a planner. This is what I do.

And my friend’s not wrong – my reactions to a third child range from vomiting a little bit when the idea’s broached to spitting out “next time” like I’m talking about brushing my teeth. But it’s the full nights’ sleep that’s speaking now – not my brain.

Lucy’s sleeping 12 hours a night. That’s about four times longer than the last six months of her life, which means I am about four times happier than I was about four weeks ago. Can we do this? Oh yeah, with eight hours of sleep. You can pre-order babies that way, right?

Anyhow, depending on the day, too, Dave and I will trade our estimates or threats on a third child.

“If you do dishes, I’ll never bring up a third child again.” That works every time, especially when the baby on my hip is angrily hungry.

But then we’ll walk in the room and Abby’ll be playing quietly on the floor with Lucy, and I’ll stop and hide behind a corner so I don’t interrupt (which would send Abby flying to the door “HERE, Mama! You play with cow! You play with the giraffe! Mama! Make giraffe talk!”, and that whole game is so old I vow to melt the cow and giraffe before Lucy’s old enough to play with them). “Here, baby sister, you cute!” Abby said, and pet Lucy’s head like a dog’s.

“Dave, come on. Don’t you want to do that again? Look at that!” And he’ll nod and shrug like he’s already lost.

Then one of them will whine (the older) or spit up (the younger), and we’ll both shrug like it’s already settled: no. Well. It’s fun to talk about, anyhow, and I have that wild card whenever I don’t want to do dishes. So, there’s that.

About six months ago I was really ambitious about potty training Abby. We bought some Dora underwear, Grandma even sent up some Elmo pairs. We bought a frog-shaped potty, some stickers and M&Ms. I was convinced it’d take like, what, two weeks? Right?

Not quite: “I no wanna ride the potty train!” Abby screamed the first time I had her sit on the potty. As I lifted her onto the potty, her wiry legs wrapped themselves around my hips, her arms grabbed frantically for my neck and shoulders. Her hips shot skyward, avoiding the horror of the froggy potty. Ah, yes. If I’d have dangled her over a vat of hot acid, maybe she’d have garnered some sympathy from me – but that green kiddie potty is SMILING. Breathe, breathe. I set her down, put the underwear on her and let her go play.

I let her wet herself – upon some advice from the always-smart Internet. Ha. That was an exercise in horror-upon-horrors for the slightly OCD, neat-freak Abby. I think we started this around 7 a.m., and I’m pretty sure we were done by noon, though I’ve tried to push the whole episode out of my memory.

Now, six months later, I’m getting antsy. “Antsy” in this case is really a polite way of saying “grossed out,” because she’s eating real people food, and COME ON. I’m so done with it.

Problem: She’s still not. I tried last weekend to re-start the engine of that potty train. “Abby, diapers are yucky!” I tried.

“Yucky! No mo’ diapers!” she said, waving her pointer finger. Yesss, perfectly, I thought.

“No more diapers! That’s right. Let’s wear your Dora underwear. Look how cute they are!”

“I wear Dora un-wear!”

“Yeah! Let’s just try!”

She picked the pair out of my hands and asked to put it on over her diaper. Uh-uh, not quite the idea I was going for, but I admired her steadfast convictions. “No, Abby. Let’s go sit on the potty. Do you want a sticker?”

“Uh-HUH!”

“Yeah? Then let’s go sit on the potty for two minutes.”

“NO!” The blinds shook behind me. My hair did that cartoon-like blow back at her furor. I swear she was breathing fire. “NO I DON’ WAN’ GO POTTY!” Her foot stomped, her underwear were flung to the floor. “NO! I WEAR DIAPER. I WEAR POLKY DOT DIAPER. NO, NO POTTY!”

I stood up, quietly closed her dresser drawer. “OK, OK, we’ll try it later.”

“No! No later!”

Breathe. Breathe, Erin.

How long can this go on? Really? How long? Is this like quitting smoking? Can you just throw the diapers away and hope for the best?  Grrrr.

I have no idea what I’m doing. Well. I’m changing more diapers – that much is clear. Gaaaaahhh.

We became one of the bad parents last night, or so said the people whose comments I was perusing on some websites I found by Googling “crying it out” from my phone while laying in bed.

It was midnight, four hours after putting Lucy to bed without a fight. At 11:45 – newsflash! – the crying began and didn’t stop. Story of our life; yawn.

To say my frustrations reached a boiling point would be like saying taking a tired toddler down a toy aisle for a present for someone else is a teeny bit of a bad idea. “I AM SO TIRED,” I cried when Lucy started her nightly routine – as in, that really awesome, hoarse cry that almost hurts your chest. “I don’t know what to do!”

Dave stared at me from the doorway: should he or shouldn’t he go in there? He leaned toward rescuing her or, rather, picking her up for a 20-minute rock in the chair or a third of a bottle … Yeah. I’d had enough. Seven months of no sleep ended NOW. Or so help me.

“Don’t go in there!” I whisper-yelled. He rolled his eyes, crossed his arms, leaned against the door frame. “Just – don’t.”

“What are we going to do?”

“She can’t cry forever!”

Only, ha! She just about could; she was about five minutes short of forever. The wailing only grew quieter when she pressed her face into the mattress. Her heaving and screaming and cry-til-you’re-breathless stretches tore my heart out. Grrrr. We went in to give her the pacifier back every so often but it was already wedged between her two angry little teeth. We said “shhh” and didn’t make eye contact, just like you’re supposed to.

We tip-toed out and read Facebook statuses on our phones to pretend we weren’t listening to the most heart-breaking sobs in the history of baby-rearing. We pretended she wasn’t yelling – in baby-speak – “You two are the worst parents EVER! I can’t wait til I’m 18! I am SO OUT OF HERE.”

And one-and-a-half hours after her nightly routine started, it just stopped. No quiet, gradual winding down. No baby-speak expletives yelled in our direction. Nothing – primal screams one second, silence the next. I sighed a breath of relief so deep it thrust my heavy head onto my soft pillow like a magnet. I slid into a coma-like sleep.

And we slept eight hours. All of us.

Eight. Hours. Bad parent or not, I am so well-rested today it’s kind of scandalous. I couldn’t even feel guilty about it if I tried.

So one more parenting shortcut has gone the way of the dinosaur.

First was the hair; she didn’t have any, so not doing it was a given. Now we fight over ponytails. Then there were the days of picking any outfit I wanted her to wear; now every morning she tries to dictate the process. As reliable as our tax bill coming right in time for Christmas, she always picks clothes in the laundry at the moment. Le sigh.

The latest is Santa.

When we saw him in the holiday parade, she pointed from her cozy spot in the Swift and asked “Mom? Dat Santa?”, and I was a little dizzy for a second because I realized this was finally my big moment – I could explain Santa and have it stick. Weeee! Santa bribes, I was not above.

I tried out my Santa line that weekend already: “Maybe Santa Claus will bring it for Christmas.”

Abby had picked up a plastic dinosaur from a shelf and fell in love. “Dat my T Rex,” she said, cramming it into her coat pocket. Before she became the youngest kid with a misdemeanor on her record, I removed T. Rex from her pocket and put him back.

“NO!” of course she said. “NO! Dat MY dinosaur!”

“No, it’s the store’s. We’re not bringing him home now. We’re getting a present for baby Oliver. What would Oliver like?”

Futile. “Dat MY dinosaur!”

“Maybe Santa Claus will bring it for Christmas.” There. I said it, feeling both proud at my classic mom moment and ashamed I wasn’t more clever with my tantrum-diffusing skills.

Plus, as I uttered this line I had no intention of informing Santa she wanted a T. Rex for Christmas. OK, I coulda just bought the dang thing, but I’d made a point: No dinosaur. Not now. Mom said no.

Look at me, following through just like a good mama.

Well, this Santa line stopped her long enough for a light bulb to go off, reminding her about the Santa facts I’d shared at the parade: Dude brings presents on Christmas Eve while good girls are sleeping. Digs reindeer. Says “ho ho ho.” Did I mention presents? Presents.

I was feeling a mixture of relief at my smoke-and-mirrors trick at the store (and also a little excited about all Santa might be able to help me accomplish this season. Could I use Santa bribes to potty-train? I was considering it. Briefly).

But starting in the car and continuing all the way home, through dinner and breakfast the next morning; all through the next week. Each night before bed, she’d sweetly ask: “Santa goin’ bring me my dinosaur today?”

Oh. About that … So. What are the odds she forgets by Dec. 25?

Some people like working out for the release, the stress-busting endorphins or something. I’m making this up, because I really have no understanding for people who like to work out. I love, love, love walking with our Zippy with Abby on a sunny afternoon. Chasing a kid around the park – I can do that. But sweating is so … sweaty.

But I was thinking I should probably start putting some more effort and less whining into fixing my mom physique, so I decided a 5K that’s coming up would make a respectable goal.

“It can’t be worse than childbirth,” I reasoned.

“We take the Zippy out everywhere; I’m in reasonably decent shape already. What’s 3 miles?” I asked myself.

Then I ran from the driveway to the stop sign, and I about died. And let’s be clear: If I wanted to, I could throw a baseball at the stop sign from our driveway. A softball, maybe. An underhanded pitch. Oooh, babies have not been gentle to my stamina.

But I didn’t die, so that’s the good part. I wasn’t ready to go Facebook on the fact I’d bought some running shoes and was pretending to be a runner. I was picturing a string of 5 a.m. wakeups and shin splints. I was picturing blogging about shin splints. Dang it.

“Do you really think I can do this?” I asked Dave, who should know because three years ago he ran a half marathon. (He has not run since, for reasons that are about to be clear.)

Dave stopped, spoon mid-air while feeding Lucy, who was sitting in the Fast at our dining room table. “Yeah,” he said, but Abby was shrieking “MAMA, MAMA, you want play dinosaurs wit me?” while running around the dining room table. The dog was scurrying under the table, away from her toddling. The mail from Monday was sitting on the table amid our dirty dishes from dinner.

The key part of Dave’s success story: he ran three years ago. Our oldest is 2 ½. That is not a coincidence.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” I said. So now I’m Googling “shin splints” and I’m sweating at 5:30 a.m., and I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Except … when I’m about a mile from home, it’s so quiet. I’m listening to Modest Mouse and Arcade Fire and no one’s spitting peas at me. So. Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing.

A couple weeks ago I was being pretty braggadocious about how cute my 2-year-old was. She’d just fallen in love with Dora the Explorer – or “Dora Bora,” as she says – and fell especially hard for the monkey, Boots. If this were study hall, Abby’d have “Boots 4-EVER” on her notebook, I was saying.  Everything became Boots. The stuffed animal monkey in her bed? Boots. The dog? Boots.

Then, it morphed into her: “I Boots, Mama,” she declared. One hand cocked on her hip, the other fanned out on her chest. “I Boots.”

Two weeks later, her obsession has stopped being so cute. Actually, uh, I’m not really sure what to do with this latest development.

“Morning, Abby.”

“No, I Boots,” she says, swinging her legs out of bed.

“Abby, let’s brush your teeth.”

“I Boots. Boots brush MY teeth.” Uh, grammatically that’s ridiculous, but I’ll work on that later.

I tried putting my foot down. “You’re ABBY, and you’re pretending to be Boots.”

“No, I Boots. I not Abby, I Boots.”

Yep, heard that rumor.

Next I attempted to ignoring it. She said Boots, I said nothing, revealed no smile or frown. She didn’t seem to notice.

I just keep thinking: Her dad and I spent months – literally months – saying baby names aloud, shortening them and concocting all possible nicknames we couldn’t live with. I did the schoolyard “Banana Fanana Fo-Fanna” song to each name and carefully, ever so purposefully we chose “Abby.” Short, sweet. What’s the worst a kid could nickname her? Abs? Beats nicknames that sound like other body parts.

But I didn’t see Boots coming. I didn’t forsee her choosing her own nickname at 2 ½ … from a cartoon.

This is what I get for turning to Dora during that 10-hour car ride last month, you know. This is karma. And, hey, at least she stopped calling her sister Map (Dora’s ever-so-helpful, well, uh, map).

I’m feeding Lucy in the chair when suddenly the edict zings through my thoughts: “GET ME OUT NOW.”

Had someone been wedged between some furniture this would’ve leapt me into action, but instead it was just my toddler. Or should I say my drill sargeant, pulling on the safty strap across her lap in her booster chair.

“MA, I WANT OUT NOW. GET ME OUT.”

“Abby, that’s how how we ask nicely.”

“PEAS.”

“No, how do you ask the whole thing nicely?”

“MA I WANT OUT PEAS.”

“Nicer.”

“Ma? Can you get me OUT NOW PEAS.” Still not a question, but it at least had “can” and “please” and I bought it because I’d already had this conversation about 56 million times since she woke up this morning.

Manners are hard, yo.

I’m really rocking the whole colors and numbers work – she can also recognize the letter A and M and W, so that’s a start; only 23 more, right?

But manners? I struggle. When it’s 7 and dinner’s almost ready but not quite and my drill sargeant’s screaming “I WANT SNACK,” sometimes it’s easier to throw her a piece of buttered bread than to stop everything around me – water boiling on the stove, baby perched on my hip, husband flying around looking for croutons, tripping over toys on the kitchen floor – to demand even a “please,” let alone a “could you ..?”

Still, I try most times: “Ask it nicer, Abby.” “How do you say that nicely?” “That was nice of your friend to share – what do you tell her?” Nicely, nice, nicer – we’re  so nice here it hurts.

Teaching manners to a 2 year old is like training a snapping turtle. (I’m guessing that’s pretty impossible.) I sigh a lot. Sigh.

But then – just when she was shrieking at me to “sit HERE, not THERE, Mama, NO, sit HERE” while we were getting the Play-Doh out, my constant nagging for a “please” caught on with her.

“Abby, stop. Hold up. You don’t get to boss Mama around,” I said. “Come here. Sit down.”

“Mama? No, Mama. You say peas.”

Did you hear that! She’s got it! That’s another I can cross off my list. Mission accomplished – now on to teaching her what? Morals? Ethics? Insider trading? We’re so on top of this.

Coincidentally, not two days before I hit the lowest point since becoming a mom of two, I decided I could probably swing a third.

I’d just driven 10 hours with both my kids, alone, to my mom’s house for a visit. “I can do this! I can totally see myself with another one,” I thought.

I was even picking out names. Henry if it’s a boy? Maybe. Margot for a girl? Names sure to get bumped from my list by the time any pregnancy pants rolled around. Still, I didn’t mention this fleeting impulse to have another baby to anyone – let alone my husband. Do I appear crazy? No, he didn’t need to know yet.

I was ignoring all the parts about pregnancy: Spandex-waisted pants, heartburn, sleepless nights, labor pains. It was like a “Baby Story” marathon running in my head. Little lambs and cutesy owls were probably visible on my forehead. Sickening now that I think about it.

See? Now I’m actually thinking about it, thanks to Tuesday night-slash-Wednesday morning.

Ugh. Yeah, you get it: I gave birth to the baby who survives on next to zero hours of sleep. Even I am bored talking about it.

But you guys: An ear infection or acid reflux or maybe just a general displeasure with life had Lucy screaming – and I don’t mean that as in “whimpering” or “softly crying”; I mean making a high-pitched noise not unlike rabid bats. OK, I don’t actually know what rabid bats would sound like, but I imagine it’s equally horrible.

I was weeping, doing the woe-is-me thing in my head: “All I wanted was a baby and I can’t even be happy with this one, just because she can’t sleep. Why can’t she sleep? What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I do anything to comfort her? Why won’t she stop? I am SO TIRED, I haven’t slept well for two straight nights in over six months.” Wha, wha, whaaa.

Highlights of motherhood, right? It gets better. Oh yes, I thought I’d throw in a little marital row, too.

Dave came in Lucy’s room to take her and I shrugged him off: “No, I got it. You can have her at 3 a.m.,” I said, angry that he hadn’t heard her cry from downstairs on the computer, and that I had heard from bed. “Just forget it, I’m up now.”

Typed out, that sounds a lot less worth fighting over. It’s fatigue. What can I say? Well. Dave would say I could say that third child’s looking a lot less likely.

At this second, I’d agree. Sadly, all it’d take is one good week of sleeping all night to convince me otherwise – the rest of this parenting thing is that amazing right now: the baby food, the sitting up, the walks in the Swift, watching Abby play with Lucy. It’s amazing … til nighttime, anyhow.

I just spent $10 on some Dora pajamas, so my convictions about not buying into the cartoon character craze have waved a white flag. It’s over. My ideas about keeping Dora, Cinderella and Care Bears in the toy box or on the TV are over. So are, actually, my ideas about not watching TV.

The Dora pajamas aren’t a big deal. Finding pajamas that a kid begs to wear is like finding out your husband already did dishes. And put them away. In the same 24-hour period.

But the TV thing bothers me.

On our trip to Ohio we watched, what, like 78 episodes of Dora. It’s not exactly teaching her to entertain herself. My stellar parenting skills shined brightly at about mile 50 of the 450-mile trip. “Here are the books I got you from the library. Look! New books! You have one about a pigeon, one Olivia book …”

“No! I want Dora!”

“I have a Dora book, too! Here!”

“No! I wan’ watch Dora on TV.”

I looked from Lucy, sleeping, back to Abby, on the verge of going on strike. I considered the next rest stop was how many miles away? Lunch was another three hours … And I knew Dora DVDs replayed themselves when they hit the end.

Ugh. I’m not proud of this. I hit play. I got back in the driver’s seat.

(On the bright side, she counts to 10 in Spanish now. All I needed was Dora?! Does Dora teach math and manners, too!? Potty training? How to drive a car? Calculus? SAT prep? I could really change my mind about this TV thing, given the right incentive.)

Anyhow – bedtimes. That’s another thing I wasn’t going to be lax about. “If they’re well-rested they listen better, eat better; they don’t body-slam themselves on the store floor and demand chocolate when what they really need is a nap …” I know all this.

But last night it was 9:30 and I was making nods to the clock and my mom, who was still giving piggy back rides around her basement to Abby.

And then I went back to sewing.

What are convictions for, if not breaking. Next up: Chocolate for breakfast.