Tot For Sale

For Sale: One three year old. Female. Eyes: blue. Hair: blonde. Fingers and Mouth: sticky (causes of which vary, but include, juice, syrup, any lotion or lotion-like substance she finds in a purse, cabinet, dresser, or counter top, bubbles, cookies, cake, brownie, cupcake, paint, glitter, paste, watermelon, dirt, popsicles, dirt covered popsicles, ice cream, sand, sand encrusted ice cream, motor oil - don't ask, peanut butter, jelly, apple, orange, grape, pasta sauce, butter). Very cute, except when she doesn't want to be. Potty trained, except when she doesn't want to be. Opinionated. Always. Frustrating to the point of madness. Rarely responds to commands. In fact, any command seems to enter her ear and pass through a device that translates the command into "suggestion to momentarily consider before I ignore it and do what I want." Energetic (seriously, you have no idea). Smart - scary smart. Knows the alphabet (including the little used "L omelo P"). Can count to twenty, and even invented her own number, "eleventeen", which comes after fifteen and before eighteen (she has chosen to ignore sixteen and seventeen as they are clearly unimportant and passe'). Silly. Funny. Smile that could knock you over. Loves bubble baths and bedtime stories. Exceptional cuddler. Makes up songs and then insists you sing them. Loudly, and usually in public. Dances a mean boogie. The biggest heart you have ever seen. Will be four (and five, six, seven and eight) way too soon.

Come to think of it, I think I'll keep her.

But I want to know who the "genius" is that coined the phrase, Terrible Twos, because, quite frankly, that person knows squat about children. A two-year old is a walk in the park on a sunny afternoon compared to a three-year old. Sure, you have to potty train a two year old and that can be an adventure, and I'll concede that a two-year old is developing his/her own personality and thus the ability to say "no", and I'll even grant you that a two-year old has learned to whine. But a three year old is a whine connoisseur (oh, what a turn of phrase!! Admit it, you like that one, don't you? I'm pretty proud of that one myself. But, true confession, I had to look up the spelling of 'connoisseur' in the dictionary, but it was worth it, don't you think? By the way, it took me quite a long time to look it up too. That's the problem with dictionaries, if you don't know how to spell a word, what good are they? Sure, at my advanced age and education I can pretty much ballpark the spelling of a word so as to page to the general area in the dictionary where the word can be found. But I spent a valuable few minutes trying to properly spell connoisseur because first I was going with one 'n' and then I was going for double 'n' then 'i' instead of 'o'. I'll never have that time back, and for what? OK, well, it was for a really good turn-of-phrase that I'm quite proud of, but that's beside the point. What if I was an idiot (debatable) and I wanted to correctly spell "hors d'oeuvre", which I also just had to look up by the way, but at least I knew to start in the 'h' section of the dictionary. If I were a real idiot (debatable), I could spend hours leafing through the 'o' section until I drove my self insane (or just give up and go with "finger sandwiches", but then where does that leave such tasty hors d'oeuvres as lamb chops, crab cakes and beef satay spears which are not sandwiches at all - finger or otherwise? And where does that leave the mother of all hors d'oeurves, pigs in a blanket? (seriously, I defy you to find a more perfect finger food - wait - there's my answer; you'd go with finger foods instead of finger sandwiches. OK, I feel a little better for the idiots. But, since we're on the subject, pretend I didn't just figure that out and read on, dear reader, read on) Now, you may argue that the "blanket", that light, flaky, buttery, just-crispy-enough crust may rise to the level of "sandwich" since it envelops the mouth-watering delicacy of combined, salted leftover meat parts, but is that really a sandwich? We don't call a hotdog on a bun a sandwich, so why would be do so if we chopped the hot dog on a bun into thirds rolled it in pastry crust and baked it at 350 for 10-12 minutes, or until the crust is a flaky , golden brown? A sandwich, one of life's most precious creations, has to be protected better than that, right? Otherwise, people will start calling anything a sandwich, which, as we all know would lead to anarchy and the destruction of civilization as we know it. What? No, that is not a stretch, it is an active theory called the Sandwich Paradigm but I don't have time to explain every life-altering theory to you people, now do I? After all, you probably wouldn't understand it anyway - you're probably the idiots who would look up hors d'oeurve in the O's.