NEED! NEED! NEED!

My Small One is generally a pretty amusing creature. Pleasant. Entertaining. Mostly cooperative. I really enjoy her, most days.

THIS day? Not so much. "NEED! NEED! NEED!" has been the rallying cry of the day. The child has been insane. In the membrane.

Oh, she's had sparkling moments of being her own sweet self, like when she stood in front of her daddy's closet imitating me as I cleaned out my closet, or when she "helped clean" the bathroom by polishing the sink with a paper towel while I scrubbed the toilet.

Actually, my favorite moment of the day was when she enforced sharing for the pets... I asked her to set a dish of egg yolks down for the cat, but she decided she needed to make him share with the dog. ("NEED SHARE, KITTY!") She'd hold the dish in front of the cat for a minute or two, then yell at him to share, and hold it in front of the dog for a minute or two before yelling at HIM to share and giving it back to the cat. It was pretty funny, I must admit.

And my other favorite moment just happened. The Man is home now, so he's taking a shift with the insane toddler, and I could hear her yelling at him in the kitchen. "NEED NEED NEED, DADDY! (Unintelligible toddler babble, babble, babble, babble) NO-NO, DADDY! NEED DAT!" but then she came running back to my room, where I've holed up with the laptop. She ran to me, lay her head on my knee, smiled and said "Hi, Mommy! How YOU, Mommy?" Who could help but smile back at her? She's a mess, for sure.

Back to the egg yolks, though... my LEAST favorite part of the day was the moment that created the dish of egg yolks in the first place, an incident that I like to call "Egg Apocalypse 2008". I accidentally left the carton of eggs on the counter when I went to do a run of laundry, and the Small One pulled the whole carton down onto the floor! To make matters worse, since I was in the back of the house gathering laundry, she managed to walk all over the place looking for me, dripping eggy goo all the way. AAARRRGGGHH!!!!

Well, I'll say this much for her- she was upset about it. Deeply troubled by the mess, and the waste of the eggs- which is new for me, because Oldest at that age would have been downright gleeful, and Middle Child wouldn't have troubled herself to try and reach the eggs. When I was cleaning her off, I asked my Small person why she made such a mess, and she said, through tears...

"NEED NEED NEED cheese eggs, Mommy!"