Sophie may be our second child, but it’s our first time experiencing the terrible twos. I always thought the image of a misbehaving two-year old was such a cliché – our first child, Chloe, was an angel until she hit three, when she unleashed her toddler fury in all its glory.

Sophie, however, is the epitome of two-year old angst. For every adorable and joyful thing she does: dancing on the couch, jumping on the bed, collecting acorns, kissing her sister, discovering a new word…

…she has an equal and opposite reaction: drawing on the furniture, throwing acorns, hitting her sister, spitting out her food with a hearty laugh and limiting her increasingly expansive vocabulary to a single word, “NO!”

My personal favorite (i.e., the behavior that drives me absolutely bonkers) is her complete and utter lack of listening skills. Especially when I take her shopping. Credit her this, though – she is helping me save a lot of money that I don’t actually have. It’s simple – if she accompanies me to a mall, I am unable to buy anything for myself, unless I knock her out with a healthy dose of Benadryl before we leave the house (for those readers who have doubts, I am being facetious here). I also burn a lot of calories. Because all I do is chase her around stores. One day, I will lose her. And it will, of course, be all my fault. It will happen like this: I will briefly take my eyes off her to admire a beautiful piece of apparel that I cannot afford, thanks to my gainful unemployment. And poof!, she’ll be gone, like Houdini. Just like that. Just like my brother (Sophie’s uncle) used to do to my mom.

While the travails I’ve enumerated above are not, by any stretch of my self-centered Mommy’s imagination, specific to Sophie, I don’t think many kids can replicate the absolutely psychotic face in the photo below, taken a couple of weeks before she turned two. I am convinced it was a preview of what was to follow.

This is Sophie channeling Mr. Hyde. When she displays that mug, we have a tendency to laugh like crazy and take lots of photos. But in the back of my mind, I admittedly wonder whether we’ve spawned a future serial killer. She does like to step on ants…Only time will tell, I suppose.

335 days and counting until she turns three. I can’t wait.