FIVE THINGS I LIKE ABOUT MY TODDLER

1. She eats; anything and all the time. My wife insisted that Vivienne have no processed sugar in her diet for at least the first year, having read that this would mean the child would eat more vegetables, fruits, etc. And you know what? It worked. This child will eat whatever is put in front of her. Broccoli; loves it. Cauliflower; can’t get enough. She did have a sweet once; a cupcake on her 1st birthday, and promptly smeared it all over her face and hair. We were in Safeway the other day; I had Viv strapped in a shopping cart as I went up and down the aisles. I was talking to the guy behind the meat counter when I noticed a couple of women giggling behind me. I turned around to see that Vivienne had grabbed a large stalk of broccoli from the cart and was eating it raw. She had green speckles all over her face and chest. One woman said; “I wish my kids would eat vegetables like that.” And the other woman chimed in with, “If only.” So as I watched my darling daughter the epicurean eat uncooked broccoli straight off the stalk, I thought; “This is a good thing. She’s not yanking large bottles of Prego sauce off the shelves where they will shatter on the floor, she is not frightening the other shoppers with her Banshee shriek, and to top it all off, she is eating raw broccoli, which is probably good for her. I can live with this.” And for a moment I almost felt lucky.
2. She sleeps; 12 hours per night and usually a 2 hr. nap in the afternoon. I didn’t realize how big a deal this was until we were at a party recently talking to a couple whose daughter did not sleep a full night until she was 3 yrs old. During the course of the conversation my wife innocently asked if they were planning on having any more children and they both said in unison; “We will never, EVER have another child!” So, yeah, the sleeping is a big deal.
3. She knows sign language. From birth my wife has been teaching Vivienne American Sign Language. I was pretty skeptical of this effort and may have made a few snide remarks about an infant’s inability to learn. But my wife insisted that even if the kid couldn’t do the signing now, as soon as she got to a certain level of motor control, it would kick in. And she was right: two months ago Viv began to signal for milk and food. She can tell you when she has had enough of something, and when she wants more (and with her, it is usually more). She can make the sign for banana and my wife is teaching her to sing ‘please’ and ‘thank you’. All of this is more or less amazing to me and I take no credit for it. My wife is turning out to be a child raising genius, while her husband, who raised 3 kids from a previous marriage, is basically a useless doofus.
4. She is happy all the time. This kid wakes up singing in the morning and babbles to herself all day in sort of a happy giggling voice. She can entertain herself. This is especially helpful when I am mired in the dumps. Some mornings when the black dog is hounding me I can put Viv down after her breakfast and tell her, “Go play, honey, Daddy needs to go in the other room and sob for a while.” And she will look at me with that solemn expression children sometimes get and then she will waddle over to her play area and amuse herself.
5. She tells us when she is ready for bed. Most nights around seven o’clock she will make the hand sign for milk and then begin crawling up the stairs towards her bedroom. This means it is time for Rochelle to make her a bottle of milk and put her to bed. At the landing on the stairs Viv will stop and blow me a kiss through the green netting I have installed on the railing to keep babies from tumbling to their death. Then she continues her progress up the next flight to her bedroom, all the while babbling happily. It you don’t think this is a big deal, try put a cranky baby to bed sometime.