More Alike Than Different

Except for the lack of speech, Linc seems very much like a two year old these days.

We said it last year, and we’ll say it again this time around. When Linc was born and we heard other parents of kids with DS say that their child was more like “typical” kids than different, we scoffed. In the early days, Down syndrome was the biggest thing we knew about Lincoln; it seemed bigger than any other detail about him we would ever learn. It defined him to us more than I like to admit in retrospect. It felt like someone had strapped a heavy backpack on us, the weight of Down syndrome that we would shoulder forever. A sentence that we would be forced to live out. No matter how smitten with Linc we were from the get go, his diagnosis was a hefty thing to bear at first.

Thank the good Lord Lincoln is such a pain in the butt that we can say with exhausted and frustrated passion: we officially have a two year old. Not a special needs child or a larger than life diagnosis but a curious, stubborn, hilarious toddler in the midst of his terrible two’s. Someone hand me a glass of wine and rub my feet because chasing this kid is going to kill me, and that is exactly what we were saying about Nico at this age. Heaven forbid you open the refrigerator or the dishwasher because the little monster is there before you can blink, grabbing a jar of salsa or pulling out a steak knife with an ornery little chuckle.

The other day, I was trying to do a load of laundry, and I thought the dryer door was broken because it kept coming open and stopping the dry cycle. I was starting to panic about having to buy a new dryer when I saw Linc walk over and open the door right after I had restarted it and stepped away. He had to pull so hard, he almost fell backwards when the door gave way, but he managed to open the dryer. Then, the little brat looked in and laughed as the tumbling clothes settled to the bottom of the dryer. I yelled, “Lincoln!” with my best angry mommy voice. Linc ran off grinning like it was the best game of gotcha with a little bit of chase thrown in. Aaarghh. Terrible two’s indeed.

But, at the same time, adorable, wonderful two’s. When I got home tonight, Nico was still napping, but Lincoln was up and erupting with smiles. I was on the phone, so Linc sat with me on the couch and crawled all over me and smiled every time he caught my eyes. When Nico woke up, Linc went skittering off the couch (he is so cute when he lowers himself off the furniture with quick, careful movements) to greet his brother. Linc walked up and grabbed Nico’s arm, then followed him around the room for a few minutes to see what kind of trouble they would be getting into together. Nico settled on legos, building a plane while his partner in crime clattered a handful of legos around on the table, infuriating Nico by stealing legos whenever possible.

After dinner, Linc found a puppet in the middle of the living room floor and slipped it on his hand. He sat down with his father and proceeded to put on a cheerful puppet show at the top of his lungs. “Baaa baa daaa,” he would say, waving the puppet with amazing skill. Sam would laugh and mimic the babbled sounds. Though Nico and I were upstairs, we listened to the show, this new kind of speech that fills our rooms now, the wordless expression that speaks volumes, first Linc then Sam. Nico told me, “He’s really doing it, mom!” And I just nodded because of course he was really doing it. I wasn’t even shocked because it takes more than a little puppet show for us to drop our jaws these days. What? He’s a two year old, now. He just does these things.