What To Expect The Toddler Years?: No one Expects
Ever heard of ironic book titles? Here’s one.
It’s called: What to Expect: the Toddler Years.
How funny. Bet they laughed coming up with that one. It sits on my shelf staring back at me sanctimoniously; mocking me. Laughing at my woeful inexperience.
Actually, no one expects.
It is probably for the best, to be honest; each day is a mystery of calamity, chaos, catastrophe, inadvertent outcomes, the strange, the bizarre, the surreal.
“What you gonna hit me with today, big boy??”
One must assume one must wear a gum-shield, old clothes at all times and excellent sprinting shoes, if one is to even get close to restraining a toddler, let alone outfox it.
Much of the daily tasks are remedial. Apologies must spout forth daily, e.g. for books being thrown on the head of an unsuspecting senile Edinburgh Tram passenger. “Oh, I’m SOOO sorry!!” (“Grrrr…”)
The walls are daily Cif-ed. Books sent to ‘The Sellotape Hospital’ (it exists in our house) – where there is a huge backlog waiting list at present. Today it was socks taken off and posted out of the (moving) car at speed, gone. Vanished. Never to be seen again. What will tomorrow bring? Who knows.
We can never expect.
© Annie Copland 2015. Mum of a 2½ year old rascal.