My Little Angel

It occurs to me that through the last several blogs I have written it may appear that my charming 2 year old daughter is a complete nightmare. There have been temper tantrums and there continues to be daily. I have also written about how she has pegged people with rubber balls in the grocery store and thrown food at unsuspecting restaurant patrons.

I don’t want to give everyone the wrong impression about my angel. My own experiences with her on a daily basis bring all those blogs to life. There is not much “funny” to be written when she does something good. Where is the drama? Where is the obstacle to be overcome and the lesson to be learned? Are the terrible two’s correctly named?

So in the effort to present a fair and balance report of my daughter, maybe I should tell you some of the good that she does.

For example, last week we were at our playgroup. She was playing with a few other kids when suddenly all wanted to play with the same toy. I have no fucking idea why all the kids want to play with the same toy even when there are 1000 other toys present and none wanted to play with that toy until someone else picked it up.

As expected there was a fight where my daughter may have been the winner if I hadn’t broken up the Thunderdome scenario. She was upset and came and put her head in my lap. While I was explaining the virtues of sharing, as I thought I was making head way. She bit me. Right on the leg.

But to her credit, she didn’t break skin. I mean, look at that restraint. She could have gone Hannibal on me, but she didn’t. She pulled back and all I had were several teeth marks. That’s my little angel, she’s learning.

The other day I asked Little Hoss to share her fish crackers with Bubba Hoss. Instead of arguing, she did share with her little brother. Except instead of handing them to him she would chunk them at his head. She could have refused to share or, as more her style, punched him in his piehole. By the time I walked back over there to check on them there was a good 2 foot pile of fish crackers around my son. One might have actually hit him in the mouth. I’m so proud.

At the library she picked up her mess and put all the books that she was reading the assigned blue basket so that the librarians could put them back. Then she helped them even more by going to the adult section, grabbing an armload more of books and even a few CDs and put them all in the blue basket as well. Now she’s being helpful too.

Finally, she actually ate her dinner tonight without me having to sit right next to her and shove it down her gullet like a butcher stuffing a sausage. All I had to do was give her a knife to cut up her own chicken nuggets. There were times that I was a little concerned that she would go Kill Bill on me and throw the knife at my head but I was smarter than that. I gave her a butter knife because I don’t think she has quite got the knowledge yet to make a shank.