I Am Awesome With Toddlers

I am terrified of babies. They're basically the worst. I mean, the only reason people have babies is in the hope that they grow out of it and become a human. If somebody told parents that they had a permanent baby, would anybody blame them for putting that baby on a raft and floating them down the river? There's a good chance Moses's Mom was told this, panicked, and got rid of his ass.

Oh, anyway, although babies suck. They almost always do grow out of it and become humans. The first stage of this evolution is becoming a toddler. With babies, I am an awkward mess, because they are sub-human, but with toddlers, they are grown up enough to appreciate my humor while not being old enough to realize that I'm actually an idiot loser.

I learned of my skills over the holiday season as I got to hang out with a two and three-year-old. At first, I thought I would be able to ignore both of these children and play with the family dogs, but neither one was having it.

At the first house, I met the two-year-old (I had met him as a baby, but that didn't count, because he wasn't a real person yet), and right away, he could tell that I knew how to party. He immediately gave me a toy dog, instructed me that it needed to ride on a cart, and I needed to take that dog on the cart to chase him around the house as he rode his trike. Real talk, I could have chased this kid around all day and not got tired out, because he is a child, and I am a full-grown man. But having to chase him around while bent over and holding a dog on this vehicle while sliding around on hardwood floors in dress socks was a very tiring experience. I needed a damn water break, but eventually I got him to quit.

After that, we all ate some well needed lunch. For my chasing efforts, I earned some bits of chicken nuggets that I declined, because there was a 100% chance that his hands had recently been in poop. I don't know how long kids poop themselves, but I do know that they play with it well past that age, so I thanked him for the offer but stuck to my sandwich.

After that, it was time to check out what he got for Christmas. This is where toddlers struggle a bit, because they're too young for video games, although that may work in my favor, because I haven't played video games in years, so I would likely be terrible at them. Anyway, we started playing with a toy record player, and then started just taking toys out of their packaging, just so we could repack them, and then unpack them again. After the 15th time we did that, he started to get bored with it, so he started sprinting around. I sat on the floor with my legs flat in front of me, and the little guy tripped right over them. He fell pretty hard; I laughed, and he then had his new favorite game. This little fella just kept on sprinting around and tripping over my legs; he must have done it two dozen times. Much like me, toddlers are entertained by the simple things in life.

But after the little guy went for a nap, my day with toddlers was still not done.

It was time to party with a 3-year-old child, and party with him I did. I said hello to the adults, but adults are boring, so I went straight to playing, because this kid had some awesome toys. We started playing Superheroes where Spiderman teamed up with Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman to capture The Joker. He also built an alligator out of legos that was wreaking havoc all over the house as it was chomping on everyone.

But the main event was Ironman hands that glowed and made cool sound effects. I was a little jealous that I didn't get to be Ironman, but this gave me the chance to use the most fun toy of all, my imagination. I threw on a pair of sunflower glasses that were laying around and transformed into Flower Man. I even had a catchphrase, "Time to Grow," and used it every time I got up off the ground. It was pretty awesome but also exhausting as I had to throw around a child, but then pretend that he could actually take me in a fight (I could have easily taken him). I let him kill me a half dozen times to try to end the game, but he kept demanding that Flower Man come back to life. I even hid the glasses, but the little bugger found them, and we resumed fighting. Finally, I brought in the most evil villain I know, my wife, to tell us that play time was over. That way she's the bad guy, and I'm the cool guy.

Overall, I would not recommend having back-to-back play dates with toddlers as an adult. First off, because I think that setting something up like that is probably illegal, and second, it's pretty damn exhausting. Those kids got to take naps when we were done; I had to be social with other adults. Life isn't fair, but I'm not going to be a baby about it. Because babies suck, but toddlers are pretty cool.