Eccentric Toddlers Unite!

This morning I got a pix message from Fibby depicting the little girl, M, for whom she babysits on Tuesdays, "hiding" objects for herself to find (as an aside, my high school English teacher just failed this paragraph for sentence structure). As I type, O is sitting at the kitchen table, pretending to talk on a hand-held Sudoku game as if it were a phone - and oh, did I mention he's only wearing a diaper?

There is a common misunderstanding among some people I know that I like all kids for the sake of being kids. Truth is, I don't. Much like adults, I like the kids I like, and the rest of them I'd cheerfully toss in a box bound for a mining community in Siberia.

I like kids with eccentricities and quirks; kids who are, in fact, kids. Unique kids. Kids who haven't been brainwashed by media. Silly kids. I don't like braggy kids, mean kids, aggressively manipulative kids, badly spoiled kids, kids without manners or respect for adults. I love most toddlers because they still have the bizarre little personality traits that make you grin, like M and her hidden objects, or O's ability to turn anything into a phone.

I wish I knew more kids like M & O, eccentric, cool little toddlers I could hang with. I feel like O's bored a lot when his bigs are at school. And then when they come home, three days out of five, they want nothing to do with him, because their littler jerk friends are around.

[I just erased a bit of biting sarcasm, of which I'm not proud. I feel I should own up to it, though, even if I never reveal what I said.]

I hope when I have them, that my kids aren't jerks.

Then I can spend my time searching for eccentric, happy little friends for them. And fervently hope that, when they get to middle school, a bunch of tarty little girls named Missi, Krissi, Kimmi, Jenni, and Nicki don't mess them up (oops, wait, that was my childhood...).