Day With a Toddler

You watch funny sitcoms or movies about life with a toddler and you think "well, it's not that bad," but sometimes it is and all you can do is laugh. Tristan's day today pretty much started and ended with showers. In the morning he found my pump shampoo and rubbed it all through his hair... shower. He would only eat my breakfast and not his own, stole every paci he could get his hands on, and walk right behind me as I picked up toys and pulled them back out. After a less than stellar nap he made a few calls on my phone, colored on the kitchen floor, and I found him "brushing" his hair with my bic razor. I tried to give him a treat of fruit snacks which are his favorite and I even put the dog on the porch so he would not eat them and send Tristan into a melt down. Well, Tristan decided he would eat the fruit snacks right in front of the window to the porch and taunt the dog. If that was not enough, he then left three lined up on the window and left to go play. I only noticed it when I heard the dog scratching at the window and making a snotty mess for me to wipe up. To round the day out, in the evening he fell into a VERY stinky pond and came home in nothing but his diaper... shower. Before bed, Neil let him run outside to burn off that last energy. A toddler running barefoot up and down the sidewalk in Christmas pjs was quite a sight, but not as big of a sight as the amount of rocks he could carry in and drop on my kitchen floor. After the kiddo was in bed and Neil and I found a wet wipe clogging up the tub drain, cheerios covering many of the bristles of my hair brush, and little plastic Lion King toys in my bed, we could not help but laugh. At different parts of the day we would be laughing so hard with Tristan and in the next breath want to research toddler boarding schools. Yes the "twos" come and go sometimes within the same day, but we find at the end of most days we have laughed more than we have scolded and had more good times than time outs. These days with little ones are sometimes long, sometimes hard, and always very full! I know I am going to look back and miss these times someday, so I try to remind myself of that during these difficult days and try to laugh now about the things I would have only been able to look back and laugh at. Tristan is one funny little kid!!