Abby has a set of animals and dinosaurs – a plastic horse, cow, a wolf, a giraffe, some T Rexes. Tyrannasauruses Rex? Whatever. She always makes me play with the giraffe and the cow, and she always begs me to make them talk to each other and the two dinos she holds in her chubby hands.

“Hi Dinosaur, how are you,” Cow asks. “Good,” the dinosaurs always answer. Then she begs me to ask again, to make Cow talk. “How are you giraffe?” “Good.”

“MAMA, makie Cow talk!”

Sigh. “How are you, dinosaur?” Etc.

It’s cute. It is, and it’s one of my favorite little moments with her. But I’ve got the endurance of a gnat when speaking in Cow or Giraffe voices, so after about seven minutes I’m hearing the dryer stop or Lucy squirms on my lap and I break away, leaving Abby with her animals.

Just a few months ago she would’ve dropped the animals to “help” me do laundry or “help” me find Lucy’s binky, but now it’s like, once I leave, a whole separate world floats down around her and we all disappear.

Yeah, I do get a lot more done … But the entertaining part is listening to Abby in this little world of hers, trying to work out the intricacies of our lives. All the tough stuff she doesn’t understand comes to life between the T Rex and the stegasaurus.

“I go work. I makie money,” one says, and she puts one on the coffee table.

“I go work?” she has the other dinosaur ask.

“No,” she answered, because Steggie had to go to the babysitter’s.

“I play aminals,” she says to herself. “No, Mama go to meeting.”

“Yets go meeting,” she says. “No, I go church. No, I go work. I stay home wit Mama? No, Mama go work.”

What. What, kid – give me a break, ask where Daddy is, geez. Step on my fragile, guilt-ridden heart.

If it were a choice, this is where I’d collapse and play animals and tell her dinosaurs and Giraffe and Cow that I’ll stay home this time and play, or that we can pretend it’s Saturday and I don’t have to work.

But … she’s playing by herself, which is a developmental milestone enough that I should feel a little relieved that she can’t be too scarred by my absences. Right? Umm. We’ll decide that later.

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Everything is “mine.”

Not mine, of course, but hers. “Mine.” “Dat MINE.” “Mama, dat MINE.” Anyone who’s spent 2 seconds with a toddler knows that what she’s getting all territorial about, 90 percent of the time, isn’t actually hers. And so we teach another lesson: Life is hard.

Case in point: Yesterday, 6 p.m.

When the four of us barge through the door after work, the diaper bag slides from my shoulder onto the floor. The baby carrier is set down with an “Ughhhhh, sigh.” Dave dashes for the fridge or the bathroom or the mailbox; Abby grabs her cup and runs to the living room.

Every day, predictable like an ear infection after a cold, this is our routine.

But yesterday I’d hardly dropped the bag before Abby was kneeling at my feet, shrieking “NO MAMA, DAT MY diaper bag! MINE. DAT MINE!”

“What do you need, Abby?” I ask in my most polite tone (or maybe I said “What? do you want?!” in that I just-worked-nine-hours-and-your-sister-didn’t-sleep-last-night tone).

“MY diaper bag.”

OK, weird enough: I just let it go while she dug around inside it while I mixed up Lucy’s rice cereal.

“No, dat MY bowl,” Abby said, one hand still trying to dig out who-knows-what from the bottom of the now-almost-empty diaper bag.

STOP THE PRESSES: Mama’s using one of her plastic bowls for the baby’s cereal!

“It’s everyone’s bowl,” I tried.

“No, MINE. I want.” She shot up, arms outstretched to the bowl in my hand.

Uh-uh, sister. No. “Nope, your sister’s using it now. You have to share.” I stood firm like a good little mom, setting Lucy in the Zuma.

But Abby doesn’t do “share” yet. She followed us into the dining room with her chant: “MY bowl. Dat MY bowl.”

“No.”

“MINE.”

A bowl. Really. And your dad is WHERE, I thought, trying the “I’m going to ignore your behavior” game. And it worked! For a good second and a half.

Out of the corner of her big blue hawk-like eyes she spotted a movement in HER living room: The dog. The DOG, OH the horror, the DOG had one of HER socks, on HER couch.

Slap your hands to your cheeks! Scream like a swamp monster just materialized! She tramped into the living room. “Dat MY couch,” she informed the sorry dog. “Dat MY sock. Mama! Mama! Dat MINE!”

Wailing ensued, but Lucy slurped her cereal in the Zuma in front of me, content and oblivious. (Liking one child more than another for a split second is an impulse I can’t control sometimes.)

“Hold on, Abby. Mama’s feeding your sister,” I called.

“NOOO! DAT MY MAMA!”

Sigh.

Someday I’ll laugh about this.

The push-and-ride toy I trip over now won’t be part of my landscape in a couple years. I get that. Bad news is, it’ll be replaced by a tricycle, a soccer ball, and a giant stuffed animal Grandma just couldn’t help but send our way. I’m sure of it.

Yeah, we’re outgrowing our house. Every inch my baby grows strains the seams a little bit more. Dave’s ever so perceptive about my subtle hints of wanting a new home (subtle as in me declaring war on my house everytime I try to put a baking dish away without knocking over the stack of reusable containers).

He took the step of emailing a real estate agent, of picking out and sending me links to homes for sale in the area, and of having the agent come tell us what price she’d recommend listing our home.

And it’s begun: We have to get the house to look like no one – especially two kids – lives in it. Easy like pie.

That pile of junk in the basement – oops! Oops, sorry, not “junk,” but Dave’s precious bin of every newspaper the budding journalist had a hand in creating since college, on top of his dental X-rays from primary school because YOU NEVER KNOW – needs to meet its end. Those 1980s end tables have outlived their fashion and usefulness.

That garage … Paint would help, I guess, but opening the door …. Well, we just don’t do that a lot.

We’re no worse than the average American – we’re not hoarders (have you SEEN that show? No, we don’t collect animals or empty fast food bags). But fixing our clutter problem is worse now, as I have an almost-5-month-old baby on my hip who looooves me. I mean LOOOOOVES. And probably not me so much as being perched on my hip 24/7.

I love that she’s chosen me as her favorite – honestly. I’ve seen how quickly that can change (hello, every evening of my life when Abby sees her dad leave for the second half of his second-shift job). Lucy’s smiles could bring down the house, thrift store-bound furniture and all.

But, dang, two hands are so, well, HANDY. You can pack and toss and organize about 650 percent faster, by my calculations.

I put her in the Zuma with some toys and I run from the basement to the living room with STUFF, and she wants out before I’ve regained my normal breathing. I lay her on the floor with some toys and she’s crying before I finish saying “I’ll be right back!”

“Endearing”? I think that’s the word I’m looking for. Yes, and “darling.” And also “at this rate I’ll be finished in 2015.”

I’ve heard “no” more times in the last couple of weeks than … someone who’s heard a lot of “no”s.

“Come here, let’s put on your shoes.” “NO.”

“Could you hand Mama the bottle lid that fell on the floor?” “NO.”

“Peanut butter bread?” “NO. (Wait a few seconds …) Peanut butter bwead! I want butter bwead!” (Because now it’s her idea! Oohh!)

Bathtime, “NO.” Play outside, “No. No pay outside.” Kiss daddy before he goes back to work, “No.”

The kid needs to expand her vocabulary. I’ve been doing a lot of deep-breathing, if you were wondering. And a lot of trying to nip it in the bud: “Excuse me? Yes, let’s get shoes on, that’s not a choice.” Cute. Really cute, Erin; Mama With An Attitude is really appropriate here.

This is really not the roll-with-it-and-make-it-into-a-lesson attitude I thought I’d be creative enough to use any old morning when I’m trying to dress her and she’s flailing as soon as her feet make it halfway down the pant leg, like I’m attempting to dress her in steel wool.

That was this morning. It’s 6:45 a.m., I’m wrestling a toddler to wear pants with the grace of someone trying to catch a pig and I know –  in hindsight I say this – she’s just showing me how independent she is. Independent! “Independent.” OK, fair enough; but that’s not the adjective I was using at so early before breakfast, but that’s neither here nor there.

“No”s don’t surprise me. No one’s ever said “my kid’s never talked back” (aloud, to other parents, for fear of mad-crazy retaliation); I had this on my radar.

But until it was 6:45 – the morning after Lucy was awake from 3 to 4:30 FOR NO REASON, so help me, what reason is there to blame now (no sign of teeth, tried that one). All I wanted was to dress Abby, to drag myself to work, to come home and veg with 20 minutes of Dora before their bathtime, and to crash into bed.

“NO.”

Argh.

Well. Good morning, independence. THANKS FOR NOTHING.