Maybe I Should Have Gotten A Parrot...

Spending day after day with a toddler is a very useful experience. It teaches you that time can stand still while said toddler inspects every pebble on the sidewalk to appreciate the little things in life. It also teaches you that the napping hours ARE in fact the most important of the day. And also that sometimes a balanced meal simply means shoving something in a mouth - regardless of who's mouth or what that something might be.

Spending all day with a toddler is also a very useful way to discover if you have any phrases that you perhaps use way too often on occasion. Because of Garrett, I now know that I:

*Say "oh my goodness" to a lot of things, usually accompanied by shaking my head back and forth.

*"What the heck"...which was said repeatedly by him while opening his birthday presents.

*Use the phrase "holy mackeral" when I am surprised by something. Which is a bit of a surprise itself - I don't even know what a mackeral really is...I think it's tuna maybe?

*I tend to say "not today" rather than just 'no' when he asks to go somewhere or do something. Although 'not today' doesn't work quite as well when I ask if he could please finish his breakfast sometime this year. When I ask that, "not today" is not really the answer that I am going for.

I could have probably spent all day with a parrot and been just as well off (ok, not really) some days...they can be trained to talk, and they also tend to have a much smaller vocabulary than three year olds.