Reaching the point where my daughter is smarter than I am. No, really.

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It was okay that Stella was addicted to my Crystal Geyser “blue water” – after all, it was just regular old non-caloric water with bubbles in it. However, I can’t bring myself to get her addicted to my juice (my secret diversion from plain old water that I treat myself with once or twice a day). Yes it is 100% juice mixed with sparkling water, but it somehow brushes up against that soda pop line a little too closely, and I just don’t want to have to start explaining why one thing is okay to drink all the time and another is just a special treat. I know you know what I am talking about. So, I have done what any parent faced with an ever smarter and more inquisitive child would do and I stealthily pour it into an opaque cup, and hope she doesn’t notice it and ask for a drink. Which, as anyone who ever reads this site knows, is a deeply flawed plan.

It became ever so obvious how misguided my plan is today when I was sitting at the computer with my covert beverage at my side, and Stella looks at me and points at my cup asking, “What dat?” To which I respond, “It’s water.” To which she responds:

“Why it taste like juice?”

Let the tally begin:

Stella: 1
Mom: 0

All jacked up (on sugar) and nowhere to go

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Tonight, on the drive back from our trick-or-treating excursion on the Plaza, Steve allowed Stella to consume an entire snack-sized Milky Way bar. Refined sugar, cornstarch-laden milk chocolate and nougat is apparently the trifecta that is the toddler equivalent to crack.

During dinner we tried counteracting the effects of the sugar high with some artery clogging cheese pizza and milk (doesn’t milk counteract everything?) but soon realized that, really, there was no way to unring that bell. Throughout the meal, she would repeatedly look at me and say, “What doing, Daddy?” then proceed to break down into fits of giggly laughter. Calling me by her father’s name is the cornerstone to her whole schtick these days, and she just never seems to tire of it.

She refused for a single conversation to take place where she was not front and center stage. Whereas most people use the conventional interjection of “Excuse Me” or “Hey, look at this” or “Over Here! Over Here!” to get one’s attention, Stella has adapted a method that is effective, yet not exactly adhering to common rules of etiquette. Lately, when she needs your full and undivided attention, she will simply cut in by screeching “BEEEEEEEEE!” at the top of her lungs. Basic human instinct is to stop EVERYTHING you are doing when you hear this noise, thereby leaving her with the perfect opening to ask you the highly important question like “What doing, Daddy?” As I said, highly effective – yet not quite adhering to the Emily Post standards manual.

As I sit here writing, I realize that I am living inside Stella’s House-of-Sugar pinball game. She has run back and forth from living room to kitchen about 15 times and demanded that Steve play play dough, read a story, do bath-time (with ALL the toys), read a story, let’s chase Rosie, one more story, BEEEEEEE!

This is the part of the story where I wonder out loud if taking all of my child’s Halloween candy to work and pretending the whole ritual never occurred makes me a bad parent. I mean honestly, by next year my chances of manipulating the situation will have evaporated completely. Just give me this one, last, fleeting chance at control of a situation.

So, as we head off to an evening of sugar crashing, I will leave you all whith a photo montage of the days leading up to and including the year of the ladybug.

Like a caged animal.

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Today was one of those days where, for some reason, we didn’t really end up spending any time outdoors. On the days that this happens I often look back in hindsight, and am amazed at my inability to stop banging my head against the brick wall that is parenting a 22-month old, and just shut her outside for an hour. Nothing calms the nerves like making nature take the brunt of my child’s need to destroy. I find it interesting that not only has this solution not sunk into my thick head yet, but it also managed to escape Steve’s consciousness that if we just put her in the hamster wheel that is our backyard, we wouldn’t have to both be on the brink of losing our collective minds.

The threshold of how many messes I can deal with in an afternoon is in the area of about 23. How do I know this? Because my precious, curious, expressive energizer-bunny of a child tests this threshold a minimum of twice a week. There are only so many times a sane person can clean up the lake created from an overturned cat water dish that has then been tracked from one end of the house to the other. Or how about how many times we as humans should be required to clean up yogurt that has been cellularly metamorphosized from a healthy food snack to a finger paint substitute? Not to mention the skill mastery that I have adopted in order to be able to effectively roll 25 feet of toilet paper back onto the roll. If we, as a human race, are given a finite number of times to say, scream, sigh or plead the word “no,” then I am afraid I am going to be fined a hefty sum for single-handedly depleting all reserves. And don’t even get me going on the fact that no matter how much I beg or plead, Stella refuses to stop picking her nose. [Picture it: we are standing at the checkout in Costco last weekend, and Stella is in the cart on the opposite side of the conveyor belt. I hear the bagger giggling and I look up to see Stella’s finger halfway to her brain. I beg. I plead. I do everything but leap across the lurching line of food and forcibly remove her index finger, and all she does in response is look at me as if to say “Make me.”]

Steve has spent the better part of this week fulfilling his civic duty at the county courthouse, and has been lucky enough to be in one of the courts that only runs until noon each day. You’d think that having two of us in the house all afternoon would actually make things easier. Nope. This afternoon, after managing to avoid partaking in any relevant energy-burning activities, we found that we had a rabid wolverine on our hands. Not only was she ready to eat us both alive, but she had somehow managed to turn us on each other. The divide and conquer strategy is not supposed to be put into play until she is at least 6 or 7. The book says so, dammit!

So, really what this all boils down to is that we have a kid who is enrolled in the G.A.T.E. program for the adorably cute yet cleverly deviant. This is SO going on your transcripts, Stella.