The two of them were so small. I remember thinking how hard could it be to watch two fast moving toddlers for a few hours? I watched the two of them run down the hall on tiny little legs, the best of friends since boy met girl at 8 months old. They rounded the corner into my son’s room and I was amazed that they didn’t bounce off the door frame. I wasn’t surprised when the door banged shut or almost shut since I had braced the top of the door with a folded blanket.

I followed; less than a minute had passed. I pushed the door open and had to force my eyeballs back into my head. In that brief moment my mind told me to breathe because this wouldn’t be the last time that I entered my son’s room and was surprised by what I found. In the span of seconds the pair of them had found the diaper cream, that thick pasty white texture was smeared everywhere: the change table, the floor, and some of the walls.

The two of them stood there all wide eyes and smiles still holding the offending grey container of cream. They were caught red-handed, or white handed in this case, and they didn’t have a care in the world about it. Both of them had white coated hands and were paused in the act of painting each other because they were already tired of painting inanimate surfaces. She had streaked my son’s hair and face in a crazy war paint pattern, and he had covered her pant legs and arms. They both had to go into the tub to get clean. However, trying to remove a cream that is meant to stick to the skin wasn’t an easy job, and I had to satisfy myself with making them clean enough to not leave diaper cream marks on anything they touched. The cream is also greasy so although cleaning the toddlers was hard trying to get that paste off of the covered surfaces in his room was a challenge to say the least.

That age old adage of never trust a quiet toddler(s) is truly good advice. I would add never trust a fast moving toddler that appears to have an important mission requiring door closing privacy.

By Shari Marshall – April 5, 2017