A Great Idea, for 10 Seconds...

Ever jump into something you knew probably wasn’t a good idea—then regret it 10 seconds later? My two-year-old daughter, Belle, does all the time. She loves the snow--for about 10 seconds. Then she decides Mommy and Daddy were right and she should have left her mittens on after all. "Cold! Done! Go inside, Daddy?” Never mind that we spent 30 minutes getting her into her snowsuit with a shoe horn and one of those old butter churners.

That’s how most kids are, though. Sometimes they like to draw or play with you. But mostly, they aren’t that interested in doing things, they just want you to stop what you’re doing—especially if what you’re doing is productive or fun—and watch them do… nothing. For 10 seconds. Then they’ll rope you into watching them do something really close to nothing. “Hey, watch me chew on this block!” If the kid’s parents are watching, you swallow hard and say, “Oh, that’s greaaat!”

The Pathetic Theorem
Belle missed her nap the other day and we proceeded to take her to a restaurant that evening with a big group. Bad idea. We should have heeded the warning from that famous mathematician. You know, the one that came up with what I call the Pathetic Theorem:

1 missed nap + 1 restaurant = 2 migraines (1 per parent)

And little kids haven't a clue what's going on; they're the least self-aware beings on Earth. For example, at the restaurant, Belle wanted her food immediately after ordering. When it didn't magically appear, she made like Scarface and cleared everything on the table within her reach with both arms.

I asked, "Belle, why are you so upset?"

"I not upset -- RAAAAH!"

Here's another example. Every weekday I come home from work and change into more comfortable clothes. Belle comes running in and declares, “Daddy’s changing—he’s poopy!” So the other day I was ready for it. I hung up my sport coat I said to Belle, “Thanks for the play-by-play commentary, Pat Summerall.”

“But I assure you, Belle, I don’t have any skid marks in my underwear.”

Belle ran out down the hall exclaiming, “Hey Mommy, Daddy has no skid maaaaarks!”

Better Barter Bureau
Sometimes kids’ perception is better than you might think, though. For example, we’re working with Belle on bartering. If she sees her baby brother, Johnny, playing with a toy and wants it, she needs to ask for it and trade a toy of equal or greater value.

You’d think she wouldn’t understand “equal or greater value” at age two, right? But she understands it all too well. Yesterday, Johnny was holding the keys to our car. Belle took them and said, “I want the keys, Johnny. Here, you take Daddy’s dirty sock!” And yes, she literally said "dirty sock."

Fair trade. Louisiana Purchase fair.

I thought Johnny would regret the trade 10 seconds later, but turns out that socks are much easier to chew. Even if he had protested the Car Keys Purchase, it wouldn’t have mattered because, after 10 seconds, Belle had dropped the keys and ran down the hall yelling, “The phone’s ringing. Pat Summerall's calling meeeeee!”

5 Things You May Know About
Little Kids

By Christopher Hollenback

This week, my friend Kim wrote a fun blog called 5 Things You May Not Know About Me. She challenged me to follow suit with a blog about five things. So here are five things you may know about little kids.

Number One: Little kids have strange phone etiquette.
Belle picked up my cell phone and pretended to call her cousin, Emma. "Hello, Emma? This is Belle. Are you wearing dress-up clothes? Great. Bye."

Hey, she cuts to the chase and doesn't eat up your "anytime minutes."

My friend called and said to Belle, "How was your baby brother's baptism, Belle?" and Belle said, "It was BUURRRRP--good." Then an awkward pause. "I burped."

Number Two: Little kids are a lot like clothes dryers.
They both have a talent for making socks disappear. It's as if David Copperfield came to your living room, raised one of his cheesy eyebrows and made them vanish.

Ever notice it's always just one sock that disappears? I don't know how my kids do it. It's like I'm some deadbeat parent of kids who go on a shooting spree, as if I'm going to go in their room some day, pull out a shirt and, to my horror, 36 non-matching socks will fall out of a sleeve. "Oh my gosh!" I'll say. And everyone will ask me, "Don't you pay attention to what your children are doing?" And I'll be like, "I was was watching football and they assured me they were folding laundry..."

Number Three: Two-year-olds love to stare at the crotches of stuffed animals for hours to determine whether they're "poopy." Is this normal? They don't tell you about this in Parent School. Yesterday, Belle held up the legs of a stuffed animal -- Bucky Badger -- and asked me, "Daddy, is Bucky poopy?"

"Looks clean to me," I said.

She kept staring for a few seconds, holding one of Bucky's feet up in the air with the serious look of a surgeon.

"Oh yeah, he's poopy," she diagnosed, nodding to herself definitively. "I'll change him." And I'm thinking, "OK, little Ms. Crazy Pants."

Number Four: 'AWEsome' is the new, well, 'awesome.'
I'm always telling Belle not to kneel or stand on furniture, but she insists, and the other day she kneeled on a plastic kid's chair, tipped it over and planted her face in the carpet.

It was like a car accident, I didn't want to look yet I couldn't help but peek to see if a head was rolling down the street. Belle popped right up and said, "That was AWEsome!" And I was like, "That was AWEsome!"

My wife frowned.

Then Belle covered for us: "Mommy's AWEsome!"

Number Five: Little girls can be just as fickle as college women. For example, Belle and I were in the store and she noticed Dave Matthews, a rock star, performing on a 50-inch flat screen TV. She was entranced.

"I LOVE Dave!" Belle said like a roadie. "Watch more, Daddy?" For the next three days we watched excerpts of his DVD at home, and she said, "I LOVE Dave Matthews, I want him to sign my diaper!"

OK, she didn't say that, but the next day she looked at me, tilted one shoulder up to her ear, pulled her eyebrows up in a fearful look and said, "Dave Matthews scary!" True story. Dave was yesterday's news. I hope she's not like that with her future boyfriends, for their sake. She'll be like, "I LOVE Craig," one day, then the next day, "Craig's scary!" Unless, of course, it's true that Craig's scary. Then I'll have to ask David Copperfield to make Craig disappear.

Copyright Christopher Hollenback, 2007, all rights reserved.

Honey, I Patronized the Kids

The other day, my two-year-old daughter, Belle, commandeers her mommy’s underwear, pulls them up over her jumpsuit and runs down the hall declaring, “I’m wearing Mommy’s underwears!” They're so baggy on Belle that they look like granny panties.

Belle’s full of surprises. That is, unless she’s trying to catch you off guard. “Daddy, I’m coming to surprise youuuuu… SURPRISE!” Then she’ll stand there three more seconds and repeat, “Surprise!”

She’s not the best at Hide and Seek, either. She hides in the same closet every time. But I play along. I’m her dad. “Where could Belle be?” I say. “Under the bed?”

Then I’ll hear her little voice: “Nooo…”

“Is Belle behind the door?”

“Noooo…” I wait a couple seconds and the closet door springs open. “SURPRISE!”

“Whoa,” I say, “you totally tricked me!” Belle thinks it’s hysterical.

She’s better at telling jokes, though. True story: She told her first knock-knock joke the other day. Out of the blue, she says, “Knock-knock.”

My wife and I look at each other—genuinely surprised, shrug and say, “Who’s there?”

“Achew,” Belle says.

“Achew who?”

“Achoo-choo train!”

OK, she’s no Bill Cosby. But have you heard other two-year-olds tell jokes? Usually, they’re like, “Knock-knock.”

Who’s there.

“Pizza!”

Pizza who?

“I want some pizza!”

Uh, that’s not funny.

“Ha-ha!,” the kid says, rolling on the floor. I know, I know, you’re supposed to humor the kid. But I’d never do that. Gives them a false sense of reality.

People say that Cosby’s comedy is in his facial expressions. Belle’s got that same natural talent. For example, Grandma gave her a book about bats having a picnic at the beach. Like most children’s books, the bats are doing human activities. Why? Who knows. And, of course, the bats look much, much cuter than real bats. It’s like how every male comedian on a sitcom has a wife who’s way cuter than she should be. Yet, despite the cute bats, Belle is still scared of her book. I try to tell her the bats aren’t scary.

She tilts her head with a half-smile and says convincingly, “The bats aren’t scary… they’re fun!”

“Alright, that’s the spirit,” I say and open the book. Then, the smile leaves her face.

“They’re… fun,” she repeats, much less enthused, swallowing hard.

I turn the page, she sees a bat playing volleyball, and she makes a face like Bill Cosby after Fat Albert stepped on his toe.

(Note to self: Don’t let Belle be your poker partner in Vegas.)

I guess the moral is two-year-olds are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get. Unless you’re playing Hide and Seek.

Copyright Christopher Hollenback, 2007, all rights reserved.