Toddler Tales from the Dark Side

They're so cute at that age.

I agree. Most of the time, I agree.

But there are those other times.

Mercifully, I don't think I can remember everything that C. got into during the holidays. She only hurled her favorite stuffed animal into the Christmas tree once, and it didn't break anything. We caught her with the food coloring before she recolored the dining room floor (again). Nobody minded that she helped open their presents before they got to them.

But then, there was the day I was baking my once-a-year Christmas breakfast treat: cream cheese danish. My recipe makes four loaves of danish, and I was doubling it so I'd have plenty to give away. The dough has to rise in the refrigerator overnight, and it was ready to go. I mixed up an enormous bowl of the sweetened raw-egg-and-cream-cheese filling and began to roll out the dough. I'd probably rolled and shaped a couple of loaves when C. trotted into the kitchen to see what I doing and grabbed the bowl of sticky goo, knocking it from the counter to the floor. We shall draw the curtain on subsequent events, but I will say that we still had cream cheese danish for Christmas breakfast.

In all the excitement and bustle, C. took a few knocks during the holidays. Christmas Eve morning, she was sporting two scabby scratches on her forehead and a bruise on her chin. Despite my objections, Krakovian made her portrait along with the rest of the kids. "Oh well," I thought, "That's what Photoshop is for." I had wanted to wait a couple of days until the scratches healed, but it's just as well that we didn't. Rather than looking better in a few days, she looked worse after pulling the keyboard shelf off the computer desk. The corner gashed her eyebrow, grazed her eyelid, and bruised her cheek. There was a lot of blood, but no stitches were needed.

It was two hours before the adrenaline subsided in my bloodstream, though.

If they weren't so cute at that age, I don't think we'd survive.