My 2-Year-Old Daughter Has a Great Sense of Humor

My two-year-old daughter only has one joke, but it’s a gem. She usually pulls it out when I’m at my wit’s end—a state I find myself in alarmingly often—and she manages to catch me off guard every single time. Whether I’m pouring pasta from pot to colander or scrubbing Weetabix off the wall, I’ll look over and see her toddling toward me, wearing my giant shoes on her tiny feet. Since they’re high-tops, they come up well past her knees, making the sight all the more hilarious for both of us.

Her knack for comedy certainly helps soften the more difficult aspects of her character. Unlike her older brother, who was easily placated after a few warnings, she doesn’t respond to the same disciplinary strategies.

She ambles towards me wearing my giant shoes on her absurdly small feet, causing both of us to laugh ourselves senseless.

Our daughter, on the other hand, has the tenacity you’d expect from an officer in the French resistance and twice as much haughty insouciance. If she had access to cigarettes, she’d likely respond to our requests by lighting one and singing La Marseillaise.

I now realize that the seemingly endless battles I had with our son—battles that would eventually result in him accepting things like eating carrots or sharing toys—were mere scuffles compared to this. Her will is ironclad, and she is not one for turning.

I only become acutely aware of this when she’s around other kids her age. Her unreasonable quirks have become so normalized at home that I’ve stopped noticing them. This was evident last week when her cousin Clodagh visited, revealing my daughter’s ‘spirited’ personality for all to see.

Clodagh brought along a game called Pop-Up Pirate, which she placed on the table to share. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a game where a small plastic pirate sits in a barrel, and players take turns inserting small plastic swords until one sword triggers the pirate to pop out. This game falls into the category of needlessly tense and inscrutable children’s games, akin to Operation or Buckaroo—best described as ‘Russian Roulette for kids.’

Soon enough, we had tension of another sort. The moment my daughter saw the pirate game, she grabbed the barrel and declared, ‘Mine!’ All attempts to take it from her were futile. Every time we tried to insert a sword into the barrel’s slots, she would seize the swords and fling them to the floor.

We didn’t fare any better with coloring. She snatched Clodagh’s coloring pages and took them to a corner by herself, now crumpled. It was only when we provided her and Clodagh with identical toys that peace was momentarily restored. In this case, two slinkies. She played happily with Clodagh but observed her intently, presumably to ensure her cousin didn’t produce more slinkies and gain a moral advantage.

After Clodagh left, we tried to emphasize the importance of sharing, but our little boss was unmoved. In fact, she left the room. When she returned, she was entirely unrepentant—not that we noticed, of course, since our stubborn little genius came back wearing my shoes.

Source: The Guardian