In the year and a half since Miss2 started walking we’ve had to make some big changes around here – like security doors to keep her in the house and blocking off the higher bits of the balcony with a furniture/cubby house barricade.
She’s a climber. She’s a runner. She’s a dodger. She’s a hider. Plus, she’s dead keen on playing with knives. She’s genuinely the biggest pain in the butt child we’ve ever had.
But having said all that I have to say she’s got beautiful manners.
“Dorry,” she’ll say when I find her emptying the entire contents of a shampoo bottle, or indeed sour cream, onto the kitchen floor to create a slippery deathtrap for unsuspecting fathers. “Dorry, Daddy.”
Just the other day Tracey found her four shelves up in the wardrobe trying to grab hold of her big sister’s makeup.
She’s always into something.
…which is why we’re always on the alert.
Miss2 shuffled up to me with her pants around her ankles. “Off!” she demanded. She couldn’t get her feet out of the legs.
Tracey had ducked out for an hour or so and the kids and I had just finished dinner, so I was cleaning up the mess. It’s easy to get distracted in this house.
“What are you doing?” I asked Miss2.
“Daddy! Off!” she said again, sitting down on the floor and pulling again at her pants and becoming even more frustrated. “Off!”
“Here,” I said, lifting her feet and freeing first one foot then the other.
“Ta, Daddy,” she said, racing off, leaving me holding her discarded pants.
At first, I assumed she must be playing dress ups and I pictured wardrobes emptied on to the floors and the lounge room covered in princess dresses and hats. I’d just decided to chase after her to supervise the disaster area when I noticed she turned left towards the bathroom instead of right towards the bedrooms.
And then I realized I could hear the sound of water.
By the time I arrived in the bathroom she’d taken off her nappy and was desperately trying to get her jumper over her head. She looked as stuck as she was with the pants.
…which was good because she’d put the plug in the bath and turned on a tap. Just one. The hot water tap.
The bath was a quarter full and the water was scorching hot. Go to the hospital hot.
Disaster averted – but the ‘what if’ had me nearly shaking, trying to work out how we can possibly head this disaster off before it happens.
“That’s it, ” I said to Tracey when she came home and I explained what had occurred. “Either I remove the tap handle or we’ll have to start turning the hot water tap off with a monkey wrench.”
I’m an ideas man.
“You’re not buying any tools,” Tracey told me.
Damn. She saw through my idea.
“So what do you suggest?” I asked my wife in a tone which may have teetered on being sarcastic in the same way sugar cane is teetering on being sweet.
“How about we hide the plug?” said Tracey.
Yeah, that might work too.
IF we put it on the other side of the security door on the high side of the balcony which is barricaded by furniture and a cubby house.
But I’m still leaning towards introducing the little so and so to cold baths.
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’Raising a family on little more than laughs.’
Mr 17 months old is the same! No fear!
My miss 2 is the same. You should be thankful she is the youngest and isnt teaching her little sister these things as mine is. Although she should score points for trying to give herself a bath.