At least that’s how it is with my 2½-year-old, Allison. I’m not just talking about "I don’t want to go to bed," "No, it isn’t" and "I won’t," although we hear those pretty often at our house.

Allie is at the age where she can be ridiculously brave and irrationally cautious in the space of two minutes. She is as fearless as she is fearful, but she is just starting to learn about the world and all its dangers. She loves to chase cats at family picnics, but at night she’s scared of lions outside her window.

At the park, she fell face-first off the twisty slide and said, "I want to do it again." The next day, she cowered behind her blankie when her dad walked into the room with the Dirt Devil. "I don’t like the vacuum. Take it away," she commanded.

I am constantly teaching her how to be safe: "Pay attention, be careful, don’t touch, look both ways, hold my hand…" But sometimes, she is the one looking out for me. We were driving toward the traffic light at the end of our road when she spotted a garbage truck on Oneida Street. "Big guck!" she announced. "Watch out for him."

Whenever she sees me using a scissors, she says, "Don’t cut yourself." Yet, she will take every opportunity to swing like a monkey, grabbing onto anything high enough for her to dangle her feet — whether it’s the handle of a shopping cart or the crossbar of the fort on our swing set, 7 feet off the ground.

Toddlers have their own way of doing things. At meals, Allie likes to dip her food: scrambled eggs in ketchup, cucumbers in blue cheese dressing, pork chops in applesauce — and then gravy. She is more efficient at this dipping when she uses her fingers (or maybe it’s just more fun that way).

Yet, the other day at lunch, she was struggling to stab a grape with her fork. It kept rolling away as she tried to pierce it. After several attempts, I said, "Honey, you don’t have to use your fork for that. You can pick it up." She dropped the fork and popped the grape into her mouth.

Allie’s latest obsession is library books, and she is very particular about them. She doesn’t like to share these books, and she is never satisfied with just one. Whenever we sit down to read, she sticks out her lower lip, looks me in the eye and demands, "Ahms," her contraction for "all of thems."

Communicating with a toddler can be a little like playing "Telephone." Toddlers are hearing and learning so many words and phrases every day, they are bound to get some of them a little mixed up.

When Allie had a cold, I told her that her friends couldn’t come over because there might be germs in the house. "I don’t have worms in my house!" she said indignantly.

The other night, we were snuggling in the rocking chair in her room when we heard some geese honking. For some reason, this got her talking about eagles. "You eat eagles," she said, and I figured she meant people in general eat eagles, and I didn’t quite get it. "You do?" I asked. "No, you do," she said. "I eat M&M cookies."

I was thoroughly stumped… and then I remembered our walk down Main Street a few days before, when we stopped at the Latte Lounge for a snack. She did, indeed, eat a sugar cookie decorated with M&Ms, and I had an "eagle" with a schmear of hummus.

A day with Allie goes by fast. She is so full of energy and personality. She can be endearing one moment and exasperating the next. And just when I’ve got the routine figured out, she decides to throw food or learns to turn doorknobs.

These days are fleeting. In a few weeks, Big Sister will be out of school and we’ll start the summer routine. The days will be lazy but they’ll pass quickly, and then … nursery school? How can my little toddler already be big enough to take this first step into the world?

That’s one contradiction I’m still trying to process.

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Lisa Miller is a freelance writer who lives in Oneonta. She can be reached at lisamiller@stny.rr.com.