The Little Catastrophe

As one daughter leaves her baby years behind the other hurtles through the terrible twos with the speed and force of a tropical cyclone. What a handful of nonsense our beautiful calm little Lollipop has become

In company she retreats into herself and climbs onto my lap to bury her head in my neck in the hopes of not been seen by strangers. Or, with some coaxing, she will sit with her sister in her bedroom and play. But alone with her family she is almost unstoppable.

The neighbour’s cat has begrudgingly given up his sunning spot on our trampoline because the Lollipop has trapped him in there a few too many times. In her delight and eagerness to touch the cat, I think she has almost dislocated his tail or maybe dug an eye out. Fortunately for her he is a placid old boy who never retaliates, just tried to run away.

She had figured out that to get into her sister's room where all the fun stuff, like felt tip pens and paints are, she just has to pull down the door handle. To reach the handle she had to stand on something. Mom was a step ahead this time and hid the stool! No worries for the Lollipop: By a process of elimination she discovered that, standing on a ball deflates the ball or standing on a pile of pillows gave you a sore head when you fell off, but empting mum's bedroom rubbish bin and standing on it you can just reach the handle and "Voila!" Of course now she doesn’t need the step up any more because suddenly she can reach.

To save my precious books from being ravaged by the Lollipop I locked them away in storage boxes and slid the boxes behind the sofa. At first the Lollipop thought they made awesome things to stand on and climb over the back of the sofa. However, now that she has figured out how the box opens it’s a treasure trove of forbidden goodies.

My clowns are off limits to everyone, nobody touches my clowns! The Lollipop doesn’t care; she reaches up as high on the tip of her toes as she can and shouts “Look Mum! Calown!” and smiles as her fingers stretch and grab for the closest one. I of course yell, “Don’t even think about it!” and land a firm smack on her butt. The Lollipop screams in horror and deathly pain, gives me a dirty look crumbles her face into a forlorn cry and stomps off to her room to hide behind her rocking chair and wail! Ignore her long enough and she'll come out her room looking for me, and, once she has found me she will look for something else illegal to do.

In these first official three months of the “terrible twos” Lollipop has managed to paint the bathroom floor with a brand new tube of toothpaste, filled the bath with washing powder and covered herself in my “Avon” eye shadow!

She refuses to play with her toys in her room, she will huff, puff and grunt as she drags her toy box into the lounge and topples the toys onto the floor.

She has emptied my bedside draw and refilled it with her sister’s toys. I have gone to bed only to discover all the Lollipop’s stuffed toys asleep in my bed. So I clear away the toys climb into bed and am singed by my electric blanket that is on the hottest setting.

I have looked out the bathroom window and seen her picking flowers in the garden, made my way into the kitchen to find her dragging in the hosepipe.

She can’t reach the pedals on her sister’s bike but she can stand on the saddle and sing about a “teddy bear’s picnic.”

Lollipop has discovered that soap makes the bath slippery and a slippery bath makes an awesome slide. I was picking my heart up off the floor when I heard a horrendous splash coming from the bathroom.

Sunday breakfast, I take a step back from the stove collide with a Lollipop recover from an almost fall only to lose my footing on the banana that she has mashed into the floor.

 

I am continually putting CDs back into the racks, books onto the bookshelves, glassware into the cupboards and bottles of alcohol back into the bar. I have given up packing her clothes neatly or putting her shoes back into the closet. I bought water based felt pens and leave her to draw on the fridge door, it’s amazing there is any paint left on it for the number of times I’ve had to remove marker pen drawings.

She hides in my cupboard, behind the television, under my desk or the dining room table; I’ve even found her between the washing machine and the sink. She’s been stuck between the fridge and the grocery cupboard, trying to climb onto the bar from the arm of the couch and climbing off a dining room chair onto my desk to reach a pair of scissors.

My darling child is always walking into walls and doors, tripping over her feet and she always tries to take off the corners of tables. I am constantly required to stop the bleeding, band-aid a scrape or kiss it all better. I am beginning to think she needs bubble wrapping and tying down!

 

It’s no wonder I’m now completely grey and leaving her in her pram in front of an ATM!