Random thoughts on parenting a toddler.

There’s no real rhyme or reason for this post, it’s just a bunch of random thoughts that have been floating around in my head. Scattered thoughts are all I can amount to lately as my brain feels fried and my motivation seems unusually low. Perhaps it is because all things Christmas have taken over my brain. But nonetheless, I have a few thoughts on being a parent to a toddler that I’d like to share with you.

When you’re a parent to a toddler, life changes. For one, I can’t pee alone. Ever. It’s like the second I close the bathroom door, a little alarm goes off in her ear and she’s alerted to my desire for privacy. Privacy? What’s that? Definitely not something that makes sense to a toddler! It’s almost as if they remember living inside your body for a year and as a result feel as though mommy’s body is like common-law property – they own 50% and therefore can have access to it whenever they please. Privacy be damned. Besides, she came out of that hoo-ha, so why does Mommy think she needs to hide it? I’m sure in her head she’s thinking “Hey, you get to hover over me while I try sitting on this thing you call a potty. Isn’t it fun when the tables are turned?” Sigh. I just want to pee alone sometimes.

I’ve also learned to lower my standard of “clean”. Clean before kids and clean after kids, are two VERY different kinds of clean. It always looks as though some form of atomic bomb has gone off in my place. It’s a constant battle. Every time I try to put a toy away, she cries, grabs it out of the toy box and throws it back onto precisely the same section of floor I retrieved it from. It’s pointless to pick up unless she’s in bed and can’t physically bear witness to us sacrificing her doll’s life by throwing it in the “toy box of death”. Heaven forbid I put her in a cute outfit, or she’s doing something hilarious I’d like to take a picture of – I have to search for a clean section of the house to take the picture from so that I can post the pic on Facebook without people thinking we live in a home that exploded toddler paraphernalia.

I’ve also caught myself talking to my child as if she is a parrot. You know how you tell a parrot “Say Hello!”, “Say, Polly wanna cracker”, etc. That’s how my day goes. “Say thank you!”, “Say Bye Gramma!”, “Say Please”, blah blah blah. Sometimes I wonder if it’d be easier if our toddler’s were little ventriloquist dummies, and we could get them to just move their mouths while we do the talking for them. That’s essentially what I feel like I’m doing all damn day. Living life on repeat, trying to get my kid to say the right things at the right times, and to be courteous. They’re at the cusp of language development, and as a result, Mommy’s sentences have turned into a newfangled toddler language I like to refer to as “Toddlerish” (Toddler + English = Toddlerish).

I resort to bribery. A lot. Especially at dinner time. When L won’t eat, I find myself saying “Will you eat supper if I put on Pingu?”. I’m always (ALWAYS) greeted with an emphatic “yes!”. So Pingu goes on, and L eats. It’s almost magical. It’s amazing how she’s learned to control Mommy and Daddy already into getting to watch cartoons at dinner time. Sigh. L = 1, Mommy =0. Then there’s me being a parrot and repeating the same thing over and over again at the dinner table. “L, please eat your dinner. One bite please. Just one more bite”. Almost every single time I say that I’m greeted with either “No!” or by her grinning at me and drinking water instead. L = 2, Mommy = 0.

There are probably a million more I’m missing, but like I said, my brain is fried and my thoughts are scattered. That’ll get better in 16 years, right?

Sigh. She’s lucky she’s cute.