Toddlers are…

Oh, dear sweet Two-and-a-Half. You’re so delicious. What amazing life skills you have developed.

It shows impressive planning skills to wait until Mommy’s not looking and then do what she just asked you not to do. My! Your scientific mind is certainly in prime display while rolling trucks down the stairs. I know I’ve cost you the  Nobel in Physics by stopping you. But right now it’s not safe. No rolling trucks down stairs.

Hey. No throwing them, either.

Oh, how clever you are to think of ways to achieve your goals yourself. Yes, the refrigerator handle is a pretty handy foothold when you’re trying to get into the freezer for ice cream. I have an idea, too, that’s probably less to your liking. Maybe ask a tall person for help. I know. That would preclude your eventual gold medal in pole vaulting.

You, sir, model quite impressive forethought and patience to ask for a spoon, then throw food at your brother when I go to get it. And again when I turn to look as the doorbell rings. And again when I close my eyes to sneeze. You’re going to be an internationally renowned ninja master if you can teach others not to blink for fourteen hours, too.

I marvel at how prepared you are, already, for college.  How you can sit there an concentrate on carefully removing the screw from the battery door on your train despite having not napped in four days is simply beyond me.

But really, I most marvel at your fine-motor skills. Only an experienced jeweler or a well trained surgeon could take toy pliers and, pinch by pinch, remove most of the potting soil from that palm tree in the living room. And heap it onto the arm of the couch. And call me over, quite proud of your accomplishments. Sorry I gasped and said “uh-oh.” I’m sure that questioning your crowning glory has scarred your for life. But I had to sweep it up. That, my friend, is a no touch.

Even when I’m not looking.

Hey. Did you hear me? Or are your training to be in Congress?

maybe you’re gonna make it after all…

or maybe not.

Hey, if you’re slowing to a crawl, thanks to the soul-crushing, voracious ghouls chasing you, here’s a bit of a pick me up: a site that will tell you, based on your birthday, about all the fascinating people who died before they made it to your age.

If cheating mortality ain’t good enough for you, I’m not  sure what is. Thanks to the literary folk at NewPages for this one…

Dead.AtYourAge.com

Wanna see how relatively young I am?

I’ve outlived Phil Lynott by almost a week. He was a singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and founding member of rock group Thin Lizzy. He died of heart failure and pneumonia on January 4, 1986, when I was 13 years old.

Franz Fanon was two weeks younger than me when he died on December 6, 1961. He was an author of “The Wretched of the Earth” and advocate of anti-colonial violence. He died 11 years before I was born.

I’ve outlived Jacques René Hébert by two weeks. He was an editor of radical newspaper “Le Père Duchesne” during the French Revolution. He died of execution by guillotine on March 24, 1794, 179 years before I was born.

Bruno Hauptmann was about two weeks younger than me when he died of execution by electric chair on April 3, 1936. He was a perpetrator of the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.. He died 37 years before I was born.

See? Fun.