Ways My 2-Year-Old Screws With Me Constantly

I’m not trying to brag here, but I make pretty intelligent kids. Ok, maybe I’m bragging a little. When they get to school, that’s a fantastic thing. They’re always over-achievers who get great grades and hopefully college scholarships. But when they are tiny and testing the boundaries of what they can get away with, it’s not always best to have a smart child. My 2-year-old daughter looks like a little cherub. She is, most of the time, a delightful little ball of fun. But she also messes with my mind and she totally knows it. Here are just a few things she has done lately (and I can’t even really get mad because she’s pretty hilarious while doing them).

• Immediately after I cleaned the living room, she brought an entire mesh bag of onions over to the couch, leaving a wedding-esque onion petal trail behind her. I didn’t even notice what she was doing until she said, “Mommy, what is this? It’s so crinkly and sprinkly!” Crinkly and sprinkly, indeed. All over my freshly vacuumed carpet. Le sigh.
• I don’t know if she just gets overly excited or likes the reaction she gets from being violent, but playing with her is sometimes like sticking your hand in the garbage disposal while someone goes around your kitchen randomly flipping switches. Sometimes I’m changing her diaper and she screams “KICKY, KICKY!” and bicycles her feet into my face, boobs or semi-fresh c-section scar. Other times she’s playing sweetly with her baby brother and then screams “BABY BRUVA, TICKY TICKY!” while violently “tickling” his face with her nails. One day I heard screaming coming from the living room and I found my sister shielding my baby from a brutal attack with a Shimmer and Shine microphone stand. Sometimes she goes berserk and pelts everyone with any toys she has in her reach. Basically we all need helmets and body armor all the time.
• One day we were at Target and she chose a “dark brown chocolate” cake pop. She rode around the entire store in the cart eating this cake pop and declaring “Oh, so yummy.” When she got to the final (giant) bite, she crammed the whole thing in her mouth, chewed it for about 5 minutes and then spit it in my hand declaring, “Yuck! I don’t like dark brown chocolate!”
• She changes her mind instantly, all the time, and it seems like there is no correct option. For example, when we go to the grocery store she says, “I want to ride! I want to ride!” So I pick her up and put her in the cart and she says, “I want to walk! I want to walk!” So I let her walk. Repeat this cycle. Times infinity.
• She is the ultimate queen of bedtime stalling. Every night she needs different pajamas, no, back to the same pajamas, teeth brushing, a story, teeth brushing again, another story, a tuck-in, no, with a different blanket, no, with three blankets, a doll with a purple dress, no, that’s not purple, a different purple dress. You get the idea. It always ends with one (or both) of us crying.
• She is a dinner time diva. For a while we gave her a plate of whatever we ate and she would eat nothing, so we would make a second dinner of yogurt or fruit or whatever baby Beyonce demanded in her green room that evening. Now we have just given up on that and give her basically any food she asks for, as long as it’s reasonably healthy. And sometimes it’s just ice cream.
• The other day, something messed up happened and under my breath I muttered “What the…” to which she proudly shouted “FUCK!” and high-fived me.