I don't understand how parents who don't have daycare live through this stage. My heart goes out to you all. I love my kids, and when they were babies I had a lot of fun with them and watching their first step, listening to their first words, pre-speech and all that. But without that 8 hours a day Monday-Friday to get away for a while, I don't know how I would have made it. Here's my favourite stage.
Kids have a special wisdom which comes from their fresh perspective.
They dance, sing, act natural. They see people at face value, without the suspicion or neurosis that adults carry with us everywhere. When puberty kicks in, we kind of lose all this inherent wisdom and we never get it back. We just get stupider and more caught up in all the complications of our lives and responsibilities. Which brings me to a paradox.