What would you do if your kid comes running to you with a handful of pushpins in her hands, in her hair and yelling “Eat!”, while at work? Me? Well, scream on the inside, of course, all while holding back a tear, trying to keep calm (her and me) and hope she doesn’t start crying bloody murder so that the co-workers don’t call the police/Superman/social services/Jesus/Oprah.
So I brought my daughter into work for a few hours. I always like taking her to work – it’s like “Show and Tell” walking through the halls, while people poke out of the offices and cubes saying things like “oooohhh, how cute!”, “look at her cute clothes”, “so that’s what a kid looks like”….etc. She loves the attention and in a proud parent kind-of-way, so do I. She’s my little pride and joy. And besides people are much friendly to you when they know you have a kid (you know, like in the movies when a victim is about to get shot by some bad dude, and then he yells “WAIT”, whips out picts of his kid(s)…then the bad dudes boss tells the rookie bad dude to only shoot the victims legs – hmmm, that could be why I carry a picture of my daughter around….just in case.)
This visit was much different than her last a few months ago. She actually moves a lot faster at 18-months... like a Ninja. One minute she’s sitting, quietly eating her Elmo Crackers humming "E-I,E-I- Oh"; I’ll turn away to look at my computer, then look back only to discover she’s run out the fire exit with somebody’s car keys and hidden bottle of tequila.
I have to watch her like a hawk these days; unfortunately those parental “eyes in the back of my head” haven’t developed yet. And she talks a whole lot more now too - but only the kind of talk that only few (wife and I) can really understand. For instance, her “Ahh man!”, sounds a lot like “Ahh, sh*t” (don’t ask… but you should see the stares we get for that one.)
What was I writing about again? Yeah, so I was picking needles out of her hair while singing Elmo’s song (distraction) and saying things like “yeah, Elmo's is one crazy dog...bird...monkey..45-year-old sicko” (quietly and calmly though - didn’t want to make people come over) and then she stared at my face, looked concerned, then said “Dada?!”….Ahh SH*T”….(real loud!)
At least she uses it in context.