The virtue of patience.

Phoebe has gone mad.

Her habitual placement on the hip of Mommy or Daddy has morphed into an all-out obsession with being carried, and demanding to “Go! Go! Go!” Dave and I have not only turned into walking, talking, motorcades for the wee princess. Apparently, we are also meant to be carnival rides. It is annoying.

Not only is her insistence on a sidecar view of the world exhausting, it is impossible. You simply can’t operate in this world with a 26-pound child hanging off of one side. (Note: a weight that bears little responsibility for its own security and welfare.) This tiny, or not so tiny, remora is starting to wear on my last functioning nerve.

I bear some responsibility for the disaster. She cries—I swoop. My hip is permanently jutted out at an angle that any human below four feet could readily jump onto. I am always at the ready to carry her adorable, ankle-biter-ness.

Yes, I am as available as a toll-taker on a Tuesday morning. She drives by with a whimper and we are up and away! It is wrong and I know that Super Nanny would absolutely slap my face, if she saw this infantile display of weakness.

Beyond the dishes and meals, which are single-handedly tossed together, there are greater costs to our daily dance. My sanity for example, I go to bed each night with high hopes of what I will accomplish the following day. I wake and realize that my wine-fueled dreams will amount to a sliver of my imagined glory. I feel a like a failure with a giant giggling tumor attached.

I don’t lack the motivation or resources. I lack independence, which it seems normal and adult life requires. I cannot even make a phone call without a greedy paw clawing for the receiver. “Hi DADA! Hi DADA”. I cannot sweep without a diapered ass sitting in the middle of the debris asking for a lift. This interference makes mountains of baking a cake or wrapping a gift. I need a pouch like a bloody kangaroo to get anything done around here. Things are bad when you envy Marsupials…Oh, to be a wombat.

I have goals, which won’t be realized until Phoebe is in college, perhaps.

I have tried to exercise extreme patience to make our co-existence a happy one. I have to let go of time-sensitive tasks and tried to embrace only that which can be done late at night or online. Christmas was a real bitch.

If only I could footnote all activities, chores, promises and ideas. “Redeemable in the next millennium.” “Best before the end of existence.” “Expires at the rapture.” I am trying not to get caught up in a Martha-esque world, where things are orderly, timely, well managed and perfect. I need a broader definition of personal success without a timeline for completion.

Ironically, my increasing need for patience seems to be lost on my little progeny. I have read that I should be the role model for a daughter, but I haven’t seen a glimmer of self-control or endurance while waiting for her desires to come to fruition. I haven’t noticed a compassionate pause for her yogurt to be opened while I peel Gabriel’s banana. She is a one-girl tirade of self-satisfaction. She lives in a world with no delay button. We are clearly not reading the same books.

She is my personal toddler-Martha-nista. Nothing is right, until she says it is right.

There is one chance that I could find peace—not in this world, but in Phoebe’s. I could throw myself hip-first into her demands. And perhaps, instead of the eternity-expiration date, on all of my goals, hopes and dreams, I will just attach a “Save the Date” notice. On her eighteenth birthday, I will return. Please be patient.