Tag: Toddler

The White Diaper Wipe of Surrender

~ sanebishop ~ 9 Comments

As my wife and I navigate through the turbulent waters of raising a toddler, I’m quaking at the thought of landing on Thomas’s two-year-old shores. TII Day (Terrible Two Day) is T-minus twenty days and counting, and my intel suggests that Thomas is preparing to mount a stout defense against his parents’ future requests. He’s already mastered the word “no” and can fire it off in rapid succession, and currently he is working on arming himself with more stinging phrases like, “Go away, Deddy” and “Go away, Mommy.” I’ll be honest, the first time he said “Go away, Deddy,” felt like a metaphorical gut shot. 

And his tantrums are only growing in size and scope. If you notice a mushroom cloud forming over the horizon, you can take hope in the possibility that it may not be Putin ushering the end of the world, but merely my toddler melting down. Recently, he had a meltdown in one of the few places on earth where being quiet is strictly enforced by penalty of stern looks and shushes, the library.  

On the day of the implosion, I had the bright idea that I would take the day off, and Thomas and I would enjoy a fun-filled trip to the park and library, with the two destinations connected by a slight detour through a McDonald’s drive-thru for a happy meal. In Thomas’s defense, this was probably too demanding an itinerary, given he was on the mend from a stomach bug. In fact, I should have known something was up when Thomas actually grew tired, yes, tired after a mere hour of play on the playground. Still, this doesn’t absolve the library from some guilt–what right-minded public administrator would dare place a train set in the vicinity of toddler books? For one thing, the toddler will automatically be attracted to trains over boring ole books. Furthermore, after being informed the train set is government property and not, in his words, “my train,” the toddler will then proceed to audition for the starring role in a horror movie by screaming loud enough to rattle the innermost pages of the densest and dustiest tomes. 

And sadly, that was not the worst of it. As I extracted Thomas from the otherwise calm and peaceful sanctum of books, with many erudite patrons glaring in my general direction, I no sooner made it out the door before Thomas, as if testing the payload capacity of a toddler’s gastrointestinal system, proceeded to projectile vomit chicken McNuggets all over my personage. The only mercy was we were at least outside the library before Thomas unleashed the contents of his stomach. Still, at that moment, I think I would have gladly waved the white diaper wipe of surrender had I not been too busy wiping my face with it.

The Problem with Toddlers

~ sanebishop ~ 6 Comments

Sometimes, in the midst of rewatching an episode of Thomas the Tank Engine for the fourth time in two weeks, I like to pause and contemplate the great mysteries of life–like, for instance, how sweet sleepy little babies transform into inexhaustible little tyrants, a.k.a toddlers. This contemplative pause is fleeting, however–twelve seconds if we’re being exact, which is the precise time it takes for a new episode of Thomas and Friends to autoload on our TV. 

These days, I do my best thinking in the momentary silence between episodes of whatever my toddler is binge watching. For instance, during the last twelve-second break between episodes of Thomas the Tank Engine, I devised a complete overhaul of our justice system that would reduce crime to all time lows and alleviate overcrowding in prisons. As this blog is not about serious matters, like criminal justice reform, I’ll spare you the details, but here is the gist: it would merely require any violent offender to listen to the Thomas the Tank Engine theme song on repeat, uninterrupted, until they transform into a placid drooling vegetable. And if you think that is cruel and unusual punishment, just remember that’s what toddlers do to their peaceful law-abiding parents all the time–plus, if I really wanted to be cruel, I could have suggested the old theme song for Barney (I love you. You love me…). 

The real problem with toddlers is pretty simple: they don’t toddle. They ramble, run, climb, crawl, roll, wallow, and wail, unless, that is, they’re mesmerized by God’s gift to parents, a talking train from the Isle of Sodor. If you take twelve seconds to think about it, solving the world’s energy crisis ought to be as simple as harnessing the unlimited energy source that powers your average toddler. I mean, when toddlers meltdown, at least they’re not radioactive. And though some diapers come pretty close to toxic waste, a diaper blow out doesn’t have nearly the environmental impact that a blown out coal ash pond would have. 

Anyway, I could go on solving life’s most pressing problems, but my toddler has suddenly tired of Thomas the Tank Engine and was last spotted moving southward bound toward the kitchen. Judging by the clanging sounds emanating from that direction, he is currently spelunking through the kitchen cabinets, and I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to be providing parental oversight of his exploration. Wish me luck. 

A New Year’s Resolution to Finish What I …

~ sanebishop ~ 3 Comments

Whereas the hours in a day total 24,

and whereas the majority of my waking hours are spent in the formidable paperwork jungle that is a government agriculture office or the chaos of my humble abode, which is the natural habitat of a toddler who has both the unlimited energy and destructive power of the Tasmanian Devil, 

and whereas projects continue to accumulate on my to-do list, many of which, before they’re even started, spawn sub-projects of equal or greater extent, 

and whereas I am easily seduced by any undertaking that involves rust, junk, or otherwise questionable purchases,

and whereas, to fund these projects, our bank account hardly has time to recuperate before it’s depleted faster than my willpower in the candy aisle,

and whereas so many half-completed projects lie in ruins around here that future archeologists will likely speculate about all the unfinished contraptions found in the dig area of our farm and what natural disaster could have so thoroughly halted their progress (say a small volcanic eruption or an localized asteroid strike)

and whereas  it was not a natural disaster per se, but merely the natural tendency of the farmer to never finish what he started, to leave things languishing in a semi-completed state, 

and whereas I, that farmer, am already fighting the urge to abandon this resolution to start other bits of writing, to thus let it moulder away in the digital leaf litter that is my documents file, 

and whereas I’ll likely forget this resolution until one day many years from now when I’ll vaguely remember I started a parody resolution of some sort, but won’t remember what I named it, 

Now, therefore, I, Stephen Bishop, sometimes known as The Misfit Farmer, other times known by words synonymous with hoarder, hereby declare this resolution nearly complete, needing only a final line, which I’ll leave to another day because I think I hear a volcano erupting outside my house.