Toddler Follies

An elephant may never forget, but boy thank heavens mothers do. Living with two small children for the past two weeks had brought back a memory or two that I could have done without. If Mothers remembered for long some of the things their children put them trough, I am sure we would all have one child at the most. Let me just say that my two nieces are adorable, like most small children. This does not however mean that they do not engage in normal behavior for toddlers. My niece Allie who is almost two has more energy than me at this stage in my life. In the past week she has done a few things that my sister and I could have done without. But we do want to experience both the good and the bad that children have to offer, don't we? Here are just a few of the things she did this week that gave us pause to worry. On Sunday she ran away from us into the street, once coming too close for comfort to a moving car. She also did not get her normal nap due to church time being changed. This made for a child who had a very hard time going to sleep Sunday night. Monday we went to the mall because it was raining and they have a small play area there. My sister and cousin went to bath and body works to check out their sale. I watched Diana and Allie in the play area. Allie kept losing interest in the play stuff and kept darting out of the enclosed area. I would then have to chase her down. Finally we decided to try to find my sister. On our way there Diana found a store that she wanted to look in. This was not a wise choice because it was full of purses, hello kitty stuff, Dora stuff, and princess stuff. At one time Allie emptied a rack of the Dora purse things and was carrying them around the store. By the time we got out of there a necklace from the clearance rack had been pulled apart. I am not sure if Allie did it, or if it was already broken. The store did not make us pay for it because it was on the clearance rack. That night I took Diana and Allie up to take a bedtime bath. We opened the bathroom door and Allie ran right over and stuck both of her hands in the toilet. It was crazy how fast she manged to do that. I got her hands washed off and started the water for the bath. Diana helped by taking off her diaper, but I did not realize that it was a dirty diaper. Then I had to hold onto her hands while we tried to find some wipes. It seemed fairly crazy. Tuesday night Diana woke me up at 3:30 because her leg was hurting her. I had her lay next to me in bed while I tried to massage the cramps away. After about 20 mins she went back downstairs to the couch. Then she came back in at 4:30 saying that she couldn't sleep and needed help with the tv. I helped her. Then my sister woke me up at 6:30 or so to get Allie's milk from downstairs. I needed to do it so that Allie did not wake her up. Diana has been woken up early before and is quite cranky. So I got the milk. My sister and Allie stayed up stairs for an hour or so and then they went down to get breakfast. One of us had not closed the cabinet under the kitchen sink all the way so that the child latch fastened all the way. Allie beat my sister downstairs and went right over and sprayed Lysol in her mouth. So then my sister got to call poison control. Come to find out Lysol is one of the best poisons that your child can ingest. So be sure to keep that one in the front of the poisonous cleaning supply cupboard. After that was over Allie proceeded to come upstairs and get the door to my sister's room open. The door has a childproof guard on it, but it doesn't work if the door is not pulled closed really tight. Of course she went in and woke the baby up. Now it is 7:30 and I hear all of this commotion going on and so I decide I better get up and help. Next we decided it really couldn't be that bad to take all of us to Wal Mart, and so once every one was buckled in we headed out. This actually went better than I might have thought. The baby slept during all the shopping. The only bad incident was when we handed Allie a bottle of bubble bath to put in the cart. She proceeds to open it and dump half of the bottle on the ground. I waited for someone to say "Clean up on aisle 10, Herb" but there was a worker close by who just took care of it. What kind of crazy place does not have a foil seal on top of the bottle anyway? Today Allie was trying to follow Diana into her room when Diana was going to change. Diana closes the door and Allie's fingers got smashed. I suppose it is a bit of a wonder that this only happened once during the two week episode. All in all I can honestly say that I do not miss the days when all you think about is whether all the doors and cupboards in your house are closed tightly. I have had my turn and well I will leave that fun to people who have more energy than me. They really are darling girls and some day Allie will grow up to be a very sweet young lady.

Yesterday we had a very low key, relaxed Fourth of July. Here is a picture of all the little girls. We had our cousin over and she made marvelous dutch oven potatoes and dutch oven pineapple cobbler. We also had ribs. Later that evening we were entertained by the $5 worth of fire works that I had bought. It was just perfect for it to last for about 15 mins.



Here are all the girls. With Victor gone much of the time it was quite an estrogen party.