Photos: Rachel Reiff Ellis

I have been a parent for about five-and-a-half years now, which if you crunch the numbers, comes out to be about only 5.8 percent of my life. And as a gumshoe-level parent, I sometimes cling to made-up truths about child-rearing in order to feel like I have the stamina to make it through a particularly hairy patch of parenting.

My most recent naïve but (oh-so) fervent hope is that child-raising is hardest during the toddler years, and once that phase has passed, it all smooths out like butter and the kids practically parent themselves.

I’m almost certain I’m right about this one. I mean, surely. Once kids can communicate better, everything just falls into place and each night is full of Brady Bunch moments and good-natured ribbing, correct? (Parents of older children, please just lie to me about this right now. Parents of teenagers, ditto times infinity.)

It’s just that navigating the shallow minefield of toddler emotions is an exhausting assignment, and I’m pooped. My daughter Rosie (who turned 2 at the end of October) has a particular penchant for wanting to be in charge not only of her own actions, but also (and most of the time especially) mine.

For example, Rosie hates it when I sing. Like she goes ballistic hates it. When we’re in the car driving around and I dare to chime in with the lyrics of a song on the radio, the screaming that commences from the back seat is akin to that of a person in a medieval torture chamber being strapped to the Rack.

For a while I complied with her very insistent requests that I stop singing, just to get her to stop that infernal racket. But then I finally had a moment of clarity wherein I remembered that she is not the boss of me (a moment in which I only just stopped myself from saying those actual words, because sometimes I am mentally 3 years old) and from that point on sang with cheery gusto when the mood strikes.

I may be sustaining permanent hearing damage from these Life Lessons In The Car With Mom, but I think ultimately it’s worth it, so long as she learns that other people are free to do what they choose, and that the only person you can control is yourself.

And also, that she is totally not the boss of me. Mostly.

The thing is, the toddler years just have a way of amplifying my feeling of parenting incompetence. It seems kind of unfair that just as some of the fundamental stuff you fumbled through during your child’s infancy — like napping and eating — start to get a little more regular, along comes this new and terrible animal called misbehavior to knock you right off your game. It’s like going through intense training to learn to juggle 17 tennis balls and then suddenly having someone tie one arm behind your back. And also toss in a rabid ferret. You go from hoping that you’re doing all the right things for this little person to just praying you both make it out with all your appendages.

If parenting a toddler were a job you had to get an actual academic degree for, the amount of continuing education you would need to stay current in your specific field once you completed your initial program would leave zero time for the actual rearing of any offspring.

I mean, let’s just observe one week of breakfasts with a toddler. Monday: BANANA? BANANA? BANANA? MAMA? BANANA? BANANA? (repeat ad nauseam, ad infinitum, reductio ad ridiculum). Tuesday: all bananas hurled to the floor in anger. Get me thine cereal, wench! Wednesday: WHERE ARE MY BANANAS??? Thursday: Good morning, Mother dear! I adore you! And this breakfast is quite tasty as well! Why, are those bananas? How lovely! Friday: A banana is offered. One solid hour of wailing ensues, steadily intensifying, pleading for an unidentifiable food substance somewhere in the vicinity of a wildly gesturing toddler hand. Parent ears begin bleeding. Finally, at the end, exhausted, the toddler lays her head down on her highchair tray in silence, and after a moment looks up and asks in a chipper voice, “Mommy, I can have a ’nana?”

Insanity, thy name is toddler.

But even though she is accelerating the graying of my hair at a frightening speed, Rosie is also consistently the brightest spot of my day. Her emotions are intense, but that means that some days I get 637 hugs in one afternoon. Or the pleasure of overhearing her fake long-distance conversation to her grandmother on a Mexican Train domino. Or the joy of watching her lopsided pigtails bob in time to the beat as she bounces to a radio tune.

It helps to assuage my feelings of lunacy for a short while. Plus, I know that it won’t be very long until this phase is just a memory, and parenthood starts to be a total cinch.

Man, I can’t wait for that.

Rachel Reiff Ellis lives in Decatur with her husband, Luke, and her two kids: 5- year-old Noah, who has bigger feet than a Yeti, and Rosie, a 2-year-old who ain’t gonna take nothing from nobody, especially you.