February 10, 2002

• 2 Year olds.

  
  

  They can cheerfully wipe their nose on the back of their hands and walk around with cheeks glazed in snot, and it does not bother them.

  
  

  They make up songs with no tune within the limits of what they know. “lalalala DUCK. lalalala COOKIE. blatherblather MUMMY. lalalasomething TEDDY.” A window into what they consider important. Notice I came after the duck and the cookie.

  
  

  They drool when they sleep. Now, I want to know what happens to a kid who drools when they grow up. Cos my child can’t be the only one, and I have yet to meet any friends or lovers (past or present) who have big drool chapped places on their cheeks from lying comatose in a puddle of their own spit all night. Maybe these people just don’t procreate since it’s too hard to find anyone who didn’t birth them to stay with them all night.

  
  

  They will play quite happily on their own, until you begin to do something that requires your utmost attention. Then they will fall apart and have half a dozen calamities all in the space of 10 minutes, which will necessitate you stopping what you were doing and in fact, giving up, since whatever it is, won’t get done as long as your child is conscious.

  
  

  They must do everything themselves. No help. Never mind that they’ve never laced a shoe up in their short lives – DON’T FUCKING HELP.

  
  

  They try to beat up kids who are bigger than them. What is WITH this? Do they not see that slapping a child who outweighs you and is 4 inches taller is going to end in tears? And why don’t they? Isn’t this some sort of survival skill that should have been programmed in them from birth? Someone messed up big time.

  
  

  They only fart in church, in front of company or during lulls in grownup conversations.

  
  

  They don’t have bad breath.

  
  

  Some days, nothing you do is right. You should just give up and find them some other mother who will understand everything cos you are a rotten mother. Just give it up and go with it. Tomorrow it will change.

  
  

  Tantrums are not funny things and you must not laugh, even when your child is doing Exorcist head spins because you won’t let her poke her eyes out with an electric drill.

  
  

  They are either all negative or all positive. You can either ask them if they want to juggle chain saws (‘Yes’) or eat six bowls of ice cream (‘No’) and it has little bearing whatsoever on what they actually want. Nonetheless, you will be wrong, no matter what you choose.

  
  

  They can sleep as little as you, but lo, they never ever sleep in.

  
  

  Once they DO crash tho, it would take a hurricane like Dorothy’s to even rouse them. However, should you absolutely need them to sleep soundly, they will immediately wake to the sound of lint dropping into the carpet.

  
  

  All food is yucky. No wait, only today all food is yucky.

  
  

  They will dance to the sound of a train going over a bridge. They can find music anywhere.

  
  

  Nothing is more fascinating than their own privates, unless it’s someone else’s privates.

  
  

  They can’t read, but they know when you skip words, paragraphs, and pages in the nightly story in an effort to get them to bed sooner. The story is 20 pages long, and they know when you leave out a word on page 4. How do they do this? Will this skill atrophy by the time they are 16 and memorising stuff actually matters so they don't end up flipping pancakes for a living? I suspect NOT.

  
  

  They don’t like the smell of ‘Mummy’s Juice’. This is a good thing, since Mummy’s juice comes in a wine glass, and appears promptly at Tantrum O’clock.

  • 6:53 pm
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