Not pictured: the latest addition, “father spots couch-jumping ‘monkey dance’ incorrectly.”

Playing in your play area, i.e. the never-used-before “dining room” (CARPETED DINING ROOM UGH) of what was until last week the only home you have ever known. Our former “bungalow” (ground-floor condo in the Central West End) was dark, damp, poorly-insulated, prone to things breaking, and in possession of a very small kitchen. But it is the home where we brought you from the hospital on that freezing February night in 2015. It’s the home where you learned to smile, sit, laugh, play, walk, dance and sing. I could not wait to move out, but now that we have, I look at this picture and I want to bawl.

It’s been a rough month, and so I treated myself to a pair of limited-edition Dr. Martens splatter-paint patterned cherry-red boots, as you do.

Your very first time with Ice-Cream Cone Control, at IKEA. Not pictured: you smearing the ice cream all over yourself and then having a tantrum because you were sticky, cold and wet. Also not pictured: you three minutes later, sans clothes.

Your new home is a two-story loft in a former shoe polish factory, also in the Central West End. It is almost unfathomably beautiful, especially given your parents’ general anti-materialistic tastes. (The former owner had a lot of high-end custom stuff put in that we never would have chosen. Like, great, a marble vanity? It’s gonna be covered in crayon soon. How do you get crayon out of marble?) You love it here, but you are also discombobulated AS FUCK by the disruption in your life. For your first two days here you barely slept, and as such neither did we. Things have been a little gnarly around here, pretty much. I might have to make a Tantrum Triggers Chart for myself. DIGRESSION: ironically, the move ITSELF was really easy. We hired people and they did a great job and were cheap, too. (Simple Moves! Look ’em up!) I was like: Holy shit, this is the only move IN MY LIFE where I haven’t just lost my damn mind. Then in the week after the move you went bezerker and I lost my damn mind.

Just a normal day shopping at Trader Joe’s.

The loft also happens to be located about a half-mile from St. Louis’s IKEA, which might be the most centrally-located urban IKEA in the US (SUCK IT BROOKLYN). I don’t have to take a boat or a bus there. I can walk. And I do. Way more days a week than I should. But hey, this rug is hella nice and you enjoy playing on it, and it somewhat dampens the sounds of your five to fifteen daily tantrums, so, you’re welcome, neighbors? (I haven’t met our neighbors yet. I am assuming they have a list about us already.)

For the first time ever, you have a dedicated room all your own, filled with all of your toys and gazillion stuffed animals, and even your very own circus tent. You spend about fourteen minutes a day in it, not counting your naps, which I have finally convinced you to take in there alone.

The IKEA stamp-felt-tip-pen hybrid seemed like a good idea at the time.

But it was, in practice, probably a bad idea.

You are twenty-six months old, little one. It is not an easy time for any of us. But oh holy hell and back, do we love you.