Today is my youngest daughter's second birthday. For my wife and I, it marks our third second birthday celebration.

And it's not like this is one of those dates we've anticipated where we've said, "I can't wait until we have three kids over the age of 2!"

But it still feels kind of like a parenting milestone.

What situations are we anticipating, you may be wondering? Well, I think having three kids out of diapers will be a big deal. I can't even imagine what that will be like. Three kids in school. One kid driving. Three kids driving. You know, those sorts of things.

But when the baby in the family hits little milestones, that feels like a big deal.

For example, she's two. So it's probably time to stop referring to her as "the baby". (It reminds me of when my grandmother used to refer to my brother as "the baby" when he was like six. And then our neighbor. When he was like 10.)

And so many things happen around 2 years old that it's a big developmental time - she's walking, she's stringing words together that mostly sound like gobbledegook but you can tell she's trying to convey something. (You can figure out when she sees an ant in the house and says, "Uh-oh, Mommy, unt." But then there are times when she spits out something like, "gubble baba fuzzle mumpegada daddda." She says it so sincerely that you know she thinks she just solved one of life's greatest mysteries but you just say, "I know", in that sing-song voice. She smiles, but you feel empty because you just established that it's so friggin' easy to lie to a child.)

Sometimes she blows bubbles and lets the wand get too close to her lips (and I think she does it on purpose), but for the most part 3 kids over 2 means we don't have to worry about kids putting things in their mouth that they're not supposed to. We're at a point where we're still cautious around stairs but we don't have to race to put up gates to block them off. We might even be able to re-arrange our furniture back to the way it was before we had kids when we didn't use coffee tables to block off stairs and instead had a passageway to the living room from the kitchen.

It's not all positive - there's that 'grazing' period right about now where she just won't sit through a meal - we've just come out of that phase with our other two, so that might stick around for a bit. But we're that much closer to all three girls fully engaged in play together, which is all very exciting to think about.

Still, I wouldn't mind if time slowed down just a little bit.

Because I can't believe our little baby is already two years old.