When people ask you how old your kid is, they often say “that’s a great age”—no matter how many months-old you spit back at them. When Theo was strapped to my person 23.5 hours a day and not sleeping at all, people would say this to me. These people were surely bat shit crazy.

But you know, now when I answer 14-months-old and people say “that’s a great age,” I’m all, “I know! I am loving this.” This is what I’ve been waiting for. This is when it all starts getting really good. Not that babyhood isn’t awesome on many levels, but toddlers, these are my people.

When I see Theo try to snap a snap for 15 minutes and get totally frustrated that he can’t do it yet, I feel for the little dude. I’m totally impatient, too!

When he takes the spoon out of my hand so he can feed himself, I’m thinking, Yes! Independence! I am an I-can-do-it-myself kinda girl. I can soooo relate.

When we go to the playground, he runs, runs, runs—then stops dead in his tracks when he sees the stairs to the slide. Then, of course, he must go up and down a zillion times. It’s like when I hit repeat on the stereo to listen to “Fame” over and over again. If you like it you like it.

And then there is the laughing, the honest-to-goodness sense of humor, the ticklishness, the smart-alecky way he looks at me when he knows he’s doing something he shouldn’t, the sleeping from 7 to 6:30, the great napping, and the utter cuteness of this child.

This is when trouble starts. This is when parents forget the hard, hard, hard part of raising babies and think, we should totally have another one.