I'm sorry. Have I left you with the mistaken impression that I'm sane? Or is that we just haven't spent enough time together? Or maybe you are suffering from the same affliction I have?
I call it denial. Or memory loss due to sleep deprivation. Either way, it causes you to forget, or at least downplay, all the things your child did during the toddler years. Often just enough to make you think that having another would be lovely.
During her toddler years Girl X:
*Bit a rottweiler on the face.
*Got in a fight with a 4 year old boy resulting in her first (but certainly not last) black eye and the boy's black eye and fat lip.
*Made blue oatmeal in my kitchen towel drawer because our cat doesn't like tan oatmeal.
*Made me pancakes. On the floor of my kitchen. With dog hair, the milk from her sippy cup and a dead bug she found in the track of the screen door. Then she put it all back in the Bisquick box.
*Stabbed my dad in the hand for stealing a bite of food off her plate without permission. Yes, she broke skin. Yes, it hurt.
*Made 'pretty pictures' on many a prized photo I was foolish enough not to have locked in a safe.
*Broke 2 windows playing Throw-The-Bone-At-Random-Objects.
*Stripped naked in the grocery store, the post office, the playground, and at my brother's college graduation.
*Ate no less than 4 spiders. Funny? She's now terrified of them.
*Used an entire box of super absorbency tampons to "help get the water out of the toilet so Cat can sleep there". And then flushed. It's a whole lot of fun trying to explain why there is an entire box of tampons stuck in your pipe. "Bad month" just didn't quite amuse anyone (except me because I always laugh when I'm uncomfortable).
*Threw up on me in public places. Many times. Enough times that I began to wonder if perhaps we should just never leave the house again.
*Kicked her Dr in the face often enough that he began calling in 2 nurses to help hold her down during exams and jokingly (I think, though maybe not really) lamented about his need to wear a hockey mask in her presence.
*Got her head stuck in a fence.
*Got her foot stuck in a stair rail.
*Broke 2 highchairs, a pack and play, 3 training potties and 1 rocking chair.
And many other things that I am telling my brain to forget.
But there are other things, little though they may have been at times, that made every one of those other moments worth it.
*Random kisses.
*Her little hands on my cheeks as she very seriously tells me that she has to fart. (I know that's ridiculous but it was funny to me. She always said it in a way that made you think she was going to cause a small explosion and you needed to be prepared).
Giggles.
*Seeing her figure something out that seems so easy to us but has eluded her, that look of pride.
*Watching her bandage Cat and seeing him let her.
*Hearing her sing 'Twinkie Twinkie Little Car' because she didn't know the 'right' way.
*Seeing her fall asleep in her food. Although, this may have been her way of telling me she hated my cooking because she did this a lot.
And many more tiny moments that over ride the insanity.
2 comments:
Wow! Those are quite the accomplishments for someone as young as Girl X. My kids weren't quite that... active, shall we say, however there was the time that my son (at age 2) locked my mother into the basement. No one else was home; he had the rule of the roost as she tried to climb on boxes to reach the tiny window, then force her body out said tiny window, run around to the front of the house and hope to god that door wasn't locked too.
Yes, I make them destructive. If ever there is a need for a demolitiont hat cannot be done with conventional means, my kids can handle it.
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