Life With a Toddler

I just spent the last 30 minutes or so sitting on the stairs with my husband while our daughter climbed all around us and tried to swim on the landing.

Life with a toddler is rarely dull.

She "helped" unpack the groceries this evening by pulling the bag of cheese puffs from the grocery sack, brandishing it at me, and saying, "Chip!  Chip! Chip!"  This continued until I finished putting away the groceries, sat at the dining room table, and gave her some cheese puffs.  The child knows what she wants and how to ask for it.  Well, demand it.

I should probably try to get her to say please now and then.  But, she's only 20 months, so I'm not too fussed about it.  We say please to her when we ask things, so she'll pick it up eventually.  She already says thank you and you're welcome.  Well, she says a combination of the two that comes out as "Thank'em," and she uses it for both purposes.

After our apres dinner snack, we went downstairs where she helped me put the laundry from the washer into the dryer.  That is one of her favorite things to do.  If I even say the word, "laundry," she starts saying, "Help!  Help!  Help!" and running for the laundry room door.

She does like to help, or try to help, even if she isn't very good at it yet.  She can pull small things out of the washer and transfer them to the dryer quite well.  If I need to pull a load out of the dryer before transferring the wet laundry over, I'll open the washer, pull the laundry out of the dryer and take it upstairs while leaving her to start the transfer.  Most of the time when I come back down she's close to halfway done.  Not bad for not even being two years old.