The Annotated Ankle Biter

I have never met a parent in my life who did not at some point or another make this claim: “I never had as many toys as my son/daughter!”

I wasn’t sure what the point of the statement was. I didn’t know whether it meant ‘I’m going to spoil the kid rotten in order to avoid having to deal with more subtle displays of affection’, or ‘damn I’m rich.’

Now that I have a child, I can decode the real meaning after having caught myself uttering that mysterious phrase—a sure sign of entry into the club of slightly freaked out parents. I too, without an ounce of irony declared: “I never had as many toys as my son!”

As I heard myself say it, I finally understood the actual translation; it really means, “How can the same parents, who assured me over multiple Christmases that clothing was a decent present, now shower my child with colourful plush or plastic items which seem to have no other function than to drive me entirely mad?”

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Toddler meets yogurt with blueberries

It wasn’t until my daughter was about a year old that I formed any opinion about bibs and their usefulness. I used to think that the one that best matched her outfit was the one for the job.

About the same time that my daughter was able to walk a bit, I was afraid that she had lost her appetite. Then I tried letting her hold the spoon, and I realized that she wanted to feed herself. She also decided she didn’t want to wear her bibs anymore, and she would throw any bib she could rip off onto the floor. I’d received about 20 bibs as gifts by that time, and all but one fastened with Velcro which she could fling off with spectacular results.

When I started to notice tubs of stained bibs and clothes soaking all over my kitchen, and that my stress level would jump if I opened up her bib drawer to find that she was out of clean bibs, I realized that I was going about this the wrong way.
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