At the ripe age of 15 months, Aubreigh has reached the terrible twos. Her worst habit? Removal of clothes. Were not just talking about one or two socks, but removing everything except her diaper (and sometimes even that). She thinks about it constantly. You can look into her eyes and see the wheels turning. She is thinking, plotting about when and what her next clothes escape attempt will be. Sometimes she is clever about it. One minute she will be fully clothed, the next she has ducked behind a chair made a few grunts to cover the sound clothes being stripped off, pops up and is in nothing but her Huggies. Sometimes she is less obvious. I call this the stop, drop and run method. This entails a sudden stop of activity as the thought enters her head followed by a sudden burst of running while sliding arms out of sleeves, kicking legs free of pants and general shimmying about until sufficient lack of clothes is achieved. This method is not as successful, usually ending in tripping over slippery pants as they fall to her knees or the dreaded “shirt over the eyes” run into the random object disaster (the ottoman or couch being the most common and comical of items to watch her bounce off of.) It does not matter how cold she is. She is going to get out of those clothes.
The reasoning? Well, quite honestly, I think it is because she can. It is a game to her to see what she can get away with. “I’ll show that daddy! He says I can’t play with electrical outlets? Fine, we will see how HE likes it when I show him that if I can’t have what I want then he won’t have a clothed baby.” Or sometimes it is just for comic effect. “I wonder if I can slip out of these pants with no one noticing….yes! I can. Now to be funny, I will pop on on the count of 3. 1…Y…5(she can’t count yet of course)…TA DA! Look Ma! No pants!” This is usually followed by either Keeley or I chasing her down as she squeals. She is the Houdini of baby clothes. She has thwarted every attempt I have made to prevent her removing them. Finally, yesterday I put on a one piece footed pair of pajamas. To further thwart her, I placed a safety pin through one side of the collar, through the zipper and through the other side of the collar. I was feeling confident when I opened the door to get her up from her nap. Of course I was greeted to Aurbeigh smiling, her clothes in a heap on the floor. The safety pin had been easily unfastened, discarded without injury and clothes shed. She proudly greeted me with a “Bye bye, Beeeby.”
Lately she has developed another funny habit. She insists that I wear my hat at all times during the day. If I don’t have it on, she finds it follows me around and yells “DAAAAAA” until I bend over and let her place it clumsily on my head. If I take it off, she quickly puts it back on. This is her way of gaining a little control. It’s her way to let me know that yes, it’s OK for her to strut around the house in her diaper like a banty rooster. But me? I am doomed to have perpetual hat hair. If she could talk, I’m sure she would simply say “Nudity for some, hats for others.”
In other news, here is the most recent sketch for Marmalade. Your comments and suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Moo-Pig gets laughs, but not a blue ribbon.
