The Peanut Gallery

I don’t want to oversell it, but I’m pretty sure I found a way to survive toddlerhood that doesn’t involve momtinis at 10am.

For those of you precious souls who have conveniently forgotten what it’s like in the trenches and are saying to yourself (or planning to comment on here), “Treasure every moment.” or “They’re just developing their little personalities!”…let’s take a trip down memory lane to some moments that exhausted toddler moms have a hard time treasuring.

Noodle Limbs.

Do you know the 2 most humiliating places to be?
1. Holding a leash with a pooping dog attached.
2. Holding the hand of toddler in public whose limbs have mysteriously* all stopped working at once. As in walking fine…waving to everyone…BAM. Instant overcooked, shrieky spaghetti.

*usually right after a mom has said “no” or “let’s go home” or “please stop sucking on the bottom of your shoe” or, in the case of the picture to the right, holding the toddler’s hand for a little more than 4 seconds (oh, the horror).

Toilet Diving.
At the risk of never having house guests again, I must admit that I can’t possibly begin to list all the household items that have made it into the toilet bowl in the past 3 weeks. We’re just hoping he shows this much interest in the toilet when we attempt potty training.

Food Rockets.
Cheerios are very aerodynamic, if you didn’t know. Parents of toddlers know this, because that’s how toddlers like to say, “Thanks for my snack, Mom, but I’m all done now. May I please get down and play?”

It wouldn’t be so annoying if Cheerios didn’t burst into 10,000,000 powdery morsels when stepped on. There’s not even really anything to clean up if you step on one. They sort of just explode and disperse. Our house is forever covered in a very fine layer of Cheerio dust.

Diapering.
The amount of strength in a tiny human who doesn’t want a diaper change in the middle of play time is…staggering. It’s a small miracle when a toddler is wearing a diaper and at least one item of clothing on any given day.

Even for a precious angel baby like our son (who happens to be the smartest, funniest, most wonderful human on the planet), some days of toddlerhood can be almost too much to bear. And we only have one. And he is fresh into this wonderful stage of tantruming.

I don’t claim to be smarter than the “parenting experts” (that’s a joke, right?) who write countless books on the subject, but I do claim that I have a $1 solution to surviving toddler tantrums: