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'Terrible two' has family on heels
(by Barbara Christian - January 15, 2009)
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
'Terrible two' has family on heels
Spent a week in the company of a human hurricane, a tiny person who leaves a trail of rubble wherever she goes.
We call her "The Baby," but we say it in a low, scary tone, so everyone knows that this is a child to be reckoned with. We don't mean Patty McCormack in "The Bad Seed" or anything like that.
What she is mostly is a 2-year-old. True to its billing, this "terrible twos" stage of life is frightening. Not to the 2-year-old but to everyone else. So scary, her not-much-older brother and sister often shrink in horror from her presence.
Her real name is the Irish derivative of Evelyn. We call her Evie.
On the surface, she is a golden-curly-haired girl with a winsome smile and a voice like Ethel Merman. No timid tot, Evie is a perpetual motion machine who runs like a grocery cart with a broken wheel.
And she is quite a good talker. Half parrot, Evie repeats everything she hears. She is also part elephant in that she doesn't forget anything she hears. A bad combination.
Evie has been known to take off her dirty diaper and hold it up for inspection in the middle of the living room when company is visiting then regale them with a description of some bodily function or other.
A growing girl, "the Baby" will eat anything and everything in sight. At a recent holiday party, she left a wake of pistachio shells and red, green and silver Hershey Kiss wrappers in her wake. Someone not realizing there was a 2-year-old around mistakenly put the nuts and candy on a table that was just within her reach and out of sight of her family. She had her own party. Evie could eat her weight in chocolate and pistachio nuts, and, on that particular night, she darn near did.
Now on a sugar high, Evie was laughing one minute and pitching a fit the next. It was like watching a 2-foot-tall Sybil. Talk about scary. Even her siblings watched in horror.
As curious as any 2-year-old, Evie can become a source of trouble at any given moment. One day not long ago, she climbed the chair in front of the family computer and began imitating those who use it. She randomly punched at the keypad. The big trouble came when she began to maneuver the mouse.
"Don't click!" It has become the frantic cry of Evie's parents, who use the computer for important work, and clicking the computer is not allowed, because recently she locked them out of all of their programs. Experts had to be called in to sort out the mess.
"Don't click!" But, being a 2-year-old, Evie will look at her parents and, with a straight face, move her hand ever so slowly to the mouse and ... click, click, click as if she heard, "Please click all you want to, Evie." One can only guess at her incredulity when she had to be carried, kicking and screaming, from the computer. The mouse has since been hidden.
That's our Evie. Did I mention she's our precious, pretty, perturbing, loving, mischievous, smart and mostly happy granddaughter? Sadly, she will grow out of being "the Baby" all too quickly.
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