Are You Ready For Toddlerhood?

Read this article in a baby magazine some time back before Baby O was even one! Managed to find this piece and thought I would share it with you. Baby O is now 17 months old and I see some signs of what's to come!

Shopping with toddlers
Go to your local supermarket with a goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goat out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.

Getting used to messes
Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a fish finger behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick your fingers in the flower beds, then rub them on the clean walls. Cover up the stains with crayons.

Getting used to messes in cars
Buy a chocolate ice cream bar and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Get a coin. Stick it in the CD player. Take a family-size bag of chocolate biscuits. Mash them down the back seats.

Getting ready to go out
Wait outside the toilet for half an hour. Go out the front door. Come in again. Go out. Com back in. Go out again. Walk down the front path. Walk back up it again. Walk down it again. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes. Stop to inspect minutely every cigarette butt, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.  Retrace your steps. Scream that you've had as much as you can stand until all of the neighbours come out and stare at you. Give up and go back in the house. You are now just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Getting ready for arts and crafts
Take an egg box. Using a pair of scissors and a can of paint, turn it into an alligator. Now take a toilet paper tube. Using only sellotape and a piece of toil, turn it into a Christmas tree. Lastly, take a milk container, a ping-pong ball and an empty box of cereal and make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower.

Taken directly from the Pampers Village Magazine UK (Month 8)