Julianisms

“A two-year old is kind of like having a blender, but you don’t have a top for it.” ~ Jerry Seinfeld, comedian

Or to paraphrase Seinfeld, with two-year olds you can expect to do a lot of cleaning up afterward.

Kirsten had just turned two in May. Which was a little unfortunate for the rest of us at home. There’s a very good reason why they call this particular period the Terrible Twos, you know.

Kirsten, unlike her elder sister, is a highly boisterous and hyperactive girl. Therefore, when things get too quiet in the house it usually means Something Is Not Quite Right.

We were all at home, resting after dinner. My wife headed off to catch 40 winks (moms-to-be get winded easily), Megan was watching TV, my mom was doing the dishes, and I was finishing up on some research on the PC (okay, okay, so I was blogsurfing).

Which is to say, we were all doing our own thing. Which effectively meant no one was watching Kirsten.

Uh oh.

After a while, it suddenly clicked: “Why isn’t there any noise in the house?”

(Trust me, friends, when you have two or more kids aged 10 and below in your house, things never stay quiet for very long. Silence is a sure sign of a crime-in-progress.)

I soon found her sitting in a corner of our bedroom. She had stripped down to just her panty. She was humming quietly to herself. And she was completely covered from her chest down in - wait for it - Vitamin E oil.

She had decided to treat herself a full body oil massage. In fact, she was literally sitting on the parquet floor in a pool of the blessed stuff, clutching the now empty oil bottle. Caught red-handed at the scene of the crime with smoking gun in hand, as it were.

She looked up at me as if to say,“What?”

Daddy was not amused.

It took almost half a bottle of liquid soap just to get her un-oily again. The Vitamin E didn’t come off easy. And the stuff isn’t cheap either.

It wasn’t until later that we could actually laugh about it. So fuming mad I was, I didn’t have the presence of mind take a photo of her sitting in that oil pool.

We’re telling ourselves at least she’ll have good skin from now on.

From her chest down anyway.

Technorati : baby+girl, family, raising kids, seinfeld, terrible twos
Del.icio.us : baby+girl, family, raising kids, seinfeld, terrible twos

Update on Sat, August 26, 2006 by Julian

Video clip: Kirsten & Mummy on TV
Some of you may recall this is a 30-second television spot for Drypantz that aired earlier this year in April. Focus is actually more on mummy than on Kirsten. Didn’t get to post it online at the time as I was on an extended blogging break.