Living in Toddler Land

While everyone else is drinking beer and cheering on our home town Hockey players, I am in the lobby holding a sugared pretzel and the hand of my son.  To his squealy delight, we are riding the escalator for the fifteenth time and flirting with the ushers on two levels, flashing them tiny smiles and bashful waves.  I can hear the crowd cheer for fisticuffs on the ice and I am getting a high five for successfully jumping at the end of the moving stair-ride.  It's odd to exist in an alternate parallel universe and when I see other parents on the same plane as us, we smile at each other in exhausted recognition.

In Toddler Land, loud noises are scary, anything mechanical and near the floor demands ample time for inspection, there are only a few good foods (cheese and macaroni and cheese,) you never have a clean shirt, and nobody speaks the language.  Time is fluid in Toddler Land; a simple wait in line at the grocery store is long enough to attempt to juggle a TV Guide, Bubblelicious and Carmex into the cart, cry about the grapes going into the bag, get tangled up in a purse strap, make new friends and wipe something sticky on the lady behind you and demand to hit all the buttons on the check out key pad.  A single stop light can last five years if there is crying involved and alternately; seventeen  hours can't possibly be enough time to play trains, nor is three months enough time to hear that one song.  Luckily the free flowing Gift Economy is solid and fueled with sticky kisses, pearly smiles and tight hugs which is why everyone in Toddler Land is rich.