Bipolar or just two?

If you’ve been reading Onward Hoe! for a while now, you know I have several irrational fears, one of which is toddlers. My only fear, really, is that I just don’t know what to do with them. They’re like little aliens to me. I like them just fine, and I’ve never met one who didn’t like me. I just don’t understand them. But I think I’m starting to.

I spent part of my July 4th (5th and 6th) vacation in northern Virginia with my friend Rachel and her daughter (my god-daughter), Annabelle. Annabelle is two, and like a true girl, she just doesn’t know what she wants sometimes. And when it’s her fault that she can’t make up her mind, she will turn on the adults who are trying to make her happy. For example, she’ll want some milk. “Want milk, want milk, want milk, want milk, want milk, want milk,” she’ll say. And she’s a very polite child, really. She says please and thank you pretty well. But you’ll give her the milk, and before she gets to the point of gratefulness for it, she’s decided she doesn’t want it. And she doesn’t want it violently. “NO MILK! NO MILK!! NO MIIIIILLLLLK!!” Oh my.

 I have to say, though, I really did enjoy listening to her have a tantrum in the car, because it was so unfounded and nonsensical. Again, she didn’t have anything that could be classified in any way as a grievance. She was just in a bad mood and felt the need to express it in scream. But the longer we ignored her, the funnier it got, because when she didn’t get one thing, she’d skip to the next. And the next, and the next, and the next. It went something like this:

WANT WATER! WANT WATER! WANT WAAHAAAATTEEHEEERRRR!!! WANT JUICE, JUICE, WANT JUICE, WANT MILK! WANT MILK!! MOMMMMYYYY! JUICE! GRAPES! GRAPES! MIL… WATER!!! KEYS! KEYS! WANT KEYS! WANT MOMMY’S KEYS! KEEEEEEYYYSS!!!! WANT WIGGLES…

You get the idea.

And she’s a smart little booger, which makes her really sassy and kind of manipulative. She’s potty training, which means she’s not wearing diapers, which means you really want her to go in the potty because the mess is much worse now if she goes in her pants. So in three days, we must have gone to the potty about 8 million times, and I think she actually went on the potty about eight of those times. But she knows that she can get out of any situation by saying that she needs to go to the potty, because mommy’s not taking any chances. If the child says she needs to go, someone takes her. Then you get her on the potty, and she doesn’t have to go (best case scenario) or she has a fit (worst case scenario). So you ask her, “Annabelle, do you need to go pee-pee?” No.

Fine. So you go back to what you were doing, and suddenly she “has to go” again. Honestly, I don’t know how potty training parents get anything done. Ever. She says she has to potty and then doesn’t, you ask her if she has to potty and she doesn’t, you ask her again and again, and she doesn’t…and then two minutes later, very matter-of-factly (and almost proudly), she will announce, “I pee-peed!”

You’ve got to be kidding me. It just proves what Whitney and I have known all along. Little kids, man. Little kids don’t care.

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