Toddlers

Toddlers can be such assholes.

This was my status on Facebook today.  And it is the honest to God truth.  I have said it before, but living with Charlie is like living with a person who has rapidly cycling bipolar disorder with psychotic features and who is quite possibly withdrawing from a substance.  In this case, that substance would be the crackers and marshmallows that I have the nerve to not allow her to subsist on.  (And hell yeah I just ended my sentence with a preposition.  That is what living with a toddler will do to you.  Their assholery will make you do things like have poor grammar.  And make up words like assholery.)

I could not even begin to imagine the emotions that that child must experience, not just day to day but minute to minute.  She will go from throwing herself down on the floor in a murderous rage when I won't allow her to climb inside the stove to running up to me with those big baby blues and asking sweetly, "Outside?  Play?".  She is very good at knowing exactly which buttons of Charles's to push and will do things like look him directly in the eye while turning a cup of milk over to pour it all over the floor.  She has perfected this unholy screech that makes angels cry and shatters crystal.  She can arch her back in the midst of her temper tantrum and put the back bend of an Olympic gymnast to shame.

But then there are moments like tonight, when she calls plaintively for me from her crib.  "Mama! Mama!"  I go up there wearily, bracing myself for the onslaught of passionate, unbridled emotions that she can sling my way.  She is standing up in her crib, holding Doggie in one hand and her blanket in the other.  She wants me to pick her up and hold her.  She snuggles into the center of my chest like she did as an infant, tucking her butt under her legs and just melting into me.  And I think, "What did I do to deserve the love of such a passionate, dynamic creature?  Why does she need me so when she is so capable of doing and being whatever she wants?  How did I get so lucky?"  All is forgiven and I can laugh at her toddler antics.

Yes, toddlers can be such assholes.