Free Dad Is Fat by Jim Gaffigan Page B

Marre was two, I was in line at a crowded New York City grocery store, and I gave her a sippy cup of
juice
in a futile attempt to stop a meltdown. She bellowed at the top of herlungs, “I don’t like jews!” Thank God, we live in New York City and my family looks like Hitler’s fantasy. Otherwise, that would’ve been pretty awkward.
    Jeannie has often described two-year-olds as at the peak of cuteness. For some reason, everything a toddler says is adorable. Maybe it’s the squeaky voice. Maybe it’s the made-up words: “Lasterday I had pesketti.” or “It’s waining! Can I bring my unclebrella?”
    They can talk, but they can’t exactly follow logic. Dr. Harvey Karp, author of
Happiest Toddler on the Block
, calls it the caveman phase. I’ve never known a caveman, but I guess that makes sense. You can’t really reason with a two-year-old. There is a lot of redirecting: “Okay, instead of playing with the scissors, let’s play with the ball. No, the hanging wineglasses are not a ball. Here, sit in this crib.” Two-year-olds don’t understand consequences. “If you keep taking off your shoes in the cab, you will lose your shoes!” Then you realize that’s the point. They are trying to lose their shoes. That’s why they are taking them off. The only consequences are for you. You will have to get them a new pair of shoes. Toddlers are adorable, but taking care of them doesn’t really get easier. Whoever came up with the term “terrible twos” must have felt very foolish after their kid turned three.
    Three-year-olds are just rude. They are still supercute, but now they are supercute
and they know it
. They have gotten supersmart, and they are not afraid to show it. It’s like living with a child emperor. They act really entitled, bossy, and outspoken. They think the world revolves around them. I realize I’m describing myself, but somehow it works better for a three-year-old.
    Recently I took my three-year-old, Katie, to the post office. As we were walking into the post office, a lady was walking out and stopped and smiled at little Katie. Katie took her thumb out of her mouth, looked the lady up and down, and said rudely, “What are
you
doing here?” This wouldn’t have been so awkward, impolite, and funny if we knew the woman. We had never met or seen the woman before and didn’t even know someone that looked remotely like the woman. In Katie’s three-year-old world, this was an appropriate response to someone smiling at her.
    Katie still sucks her thumb at three years old. When she was two, everyone told us that she would stop when she was three, but she kept on sucking her thumb. She is our third child and our first thumb sucker. Thumb sucking brings with it so many mixed emotions. There is that immediate fear that somehow we have failed her. That she is sucking her thumb because she doesn’t get enough attention or she wasn’t nursed long enough. The reality is that she probably gets more attention and has better parents than our first two kids. Still, why the thumb? Am I worried that one day the thumb will be replaced by a crack pipe? Yes. Is that likely to happen? No.
    Thumb sucking is adorable in many ways. When Katie is angry, she uses the thumb sucking as an exclamation to emphasize her point. “I’m not taking a bath … [
insert thumb
].” When she has a stuffed-up nose, it is incredibly comical to witness her attempt to suck her thumb and breathe at the same time.
    Of course, we’ve tried to stop her from sucking her thumb. We put some nasty goo on her thumb that she quickly got used to. She found a way to wipe it off and sucked the thumb withtwice the vigor. We tried telling her to stop sucking her thumb because she was a big kid now, but that only made it more special and prompted Katie to do the double-handed thumb suck. She holds a protective hand over the hand that has the thumb being sucked. With the double-handed thumb suck, she still only sucks on one thumb, but it looks