Toddler Daughter Quotes

When my daughter was a toddler, I used to take her to a park not far from our apartment. One day as she was playing in a sandbox, an ice-cream salesman approached us. I purchased her a treat, and when I turned to give it to her, I saw her mouth was full of sand. Where I had intended to put a delicacy, she had put dirt. Did I love her with dirt in her mouth? Absolutely. Was she any less of my daughter with dirt in her mouth? Of course not. Was I going to allow her to keep the dirt in her mouth? No way. I loved her right where she was, but I refused to leave her there. I carried her over to the water fountain and washed out her mouth. Why? Because I love her. God does the same for us. He holds us over the fountain. "Spit out the dirt, honey," our Father urges. "I've got something better for you." And so he cleanses us of filth; immorality, dishonesty, prejudice, bitterness, greed. We don't enjoy the cleansing; sometimes we even opt for the dirt over the ice cream. "I can eat dirt if I want to!" we pout and proclaim. Which is true—we can. But if we do, the loss is ours. God has a better offer.

Vianne didn’t hesitate. She knew now that no one could be neutral—not anymore—and as afraid as she was of risking Sophie’s life, she was suddenly more afraid of letting her daughter grow up in a world where good people did nothing to stop evil, where a good woman could turn her back on a friend in need. She reached for the toddler, took him in her arms.

I used to wonder why I had hair on my legs, but now I know it's for my toddler sons and daughters to pull themselves up off the ground with as I scream in pain.

Had I catalogued the downsides of parenthood, "son might turn out to be a killer" would never have turned up on the list. Rather, it might have looked something like this: 1. Hassle. 2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us.) 3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid's insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.) 4. Turning into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister-in-law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could say. So I didn't say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.) 5. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was best for someone else. (I'm a pig.) 6. Curtailment of my traveling. (Note curtailment. Not conclusion.) 7. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself.) 8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend's five-year-old in the room.) 9. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew--every woman, too, which is depressing--would take me less seriously.) 10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother would feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter's life is hideous, too.)

You have more power than you realise. There is nothing your mother can really do. Her Narcissistic Rage is only toddlers’ tantrums, and can be seen as such. Her Narcissistic Huff is just a sulk.

West lounged on the floor between her two sons, a heavy forelock of dark hair falling over his forehead. “What does a chicken say?” he asked Stephen, holding up a wooden figure. The toddler took it from him and answered, “Rowwr!” West blinked in surprise and began to chuckle along with Justin. “By God, that is a fierce chicken.

By the fridge, Lily holds a sleepy toddler in a panda onesie, and she whispers quietly with Lo. He has this look like he’s half-listening but really he’s thinking about how adorable his wife fucking is, especially with his daughter right there. I know how this’ll go so I don’t wait around to watch. He’ll tease her by leaning in for a kiss, only to stick his tongue in Lily’s ear. She’ll whisper-hiss his name and then slug his shoulder. He’ll mock wince. They’ll look infatuated with each other, remembering how many years they’ve spent. How far their lives have come. How much love they’ve shared. Their romance has never changed. We all thank the fucking world for that because there is no Lily without Lo. There is no Lo without Lily

Margaret Mearle, daughter of the Count of Crossroads, had been Catherine’s closest bosom friend since they were toddlers. Unfortunately, they had never much liked each other.

Granting an equal vote to the ignorant is like handing matches to a toddler

Anis Mojgani once said about toddlers: They cannot be understood because they speak half English and half God.

You cannot be a mother until you are a daughter, an infant until you are a toddler, a youth until you are a youngster, a grownup until you are a teenager, an elder until you are a minor, an ancestor until you are a progenitor, a father until you are a creator, and an heir until you are a successor. Nor can you be a master until you are a scholar, a guru until you are a learner, a leader until you are a follower, a warrior until you are a fighter, a general until you are a soldier, a pope until you are a worshiper, a doctor until you are a healer, and an apostle until you are a believer.

There was something about seeing my daughter riding her little Radio Flyer tricycle for the first time that made me want to stuff her back in my womb and refuse to let her ever leave the safety of my body again—but not before filling an entire digital memory card with pictures.

Phoebe knew West couldn't see beyond his own fears of being unworthy, of someday causing her unhappiness. But this high degree of concern was precisely what inclined her to trust him. One thing was clear: if she wanted him, she would have to be the pursuer. West lounged on the floor between her two sons, a heavy forelock of dark hair falling over his forehead. "What does a chicken say?" he asked Stephen, holding up a wooden figure. The toddler took it from him and answered, "Rowwr!" West blinked in surprise and began to chuckle along with Justin. "By God, that is a fierce chicken." Delighted by his effect on West, Stephen held up the chicken. "Rowwr," he growled again, and this time West and Justin collapsed in laughter. Quickly West reached out to the toddler's blond head, pulled him closer and crushed a brief kiss among the soft curls. Had there been any doubts lingering in Phoebe's mind, they were demolished in that moment. Oh, yes... I want this man.

Mother-daughter relationships can be complicated and fraught with the effects of moments from the past. My mom knew this and wanted me to know it too. On one visit home, I found an essay from the Washington Post by the linguistics professor Deborah Tannen that had been cut out and left on my desk. My mom, and her mom before her, loved clipping newspaper articles and cartoons from the paper to send to Barbara and me. This article was different. Above it, my mom had written a note: “Dear Benny”—I was “Benny” from the time I was a toddler; the family folklore was that when we were babies, a man approached my parents, commenting on their cute baby boys, and my parents played along, pretending our names were Benjamin and Beauregard, later shorted to Benny and Bo. In her note, my mom confessed to doing many things that the writer of this piece had done: checking my hair, my appearance. As a teenager, I was continually annoyed by some of her requests: comb your hair; pull up your jeans (remember when low-rise jeans were a thing? It was not a good look, I can assure you!). “Your mother may assume it goes without saying that she is proud of you,” Deborah Tannen wrote. “Everyone knows that. And everyone probably also notices that your bangs are obscuring your vision—and their view of your eyes. Because others won’t say anything, your mother may feel it’s her obligation to tell you.” In leaving her note and the clipping, my mom was reminding me that she accepted and loved me—and that there is no perfect way to be a mother. While we might have questioned some of the things our mother said, we never questioned her love.

I occasionally find myself aching for the infant and toddler I’d once known and loved. She’s been replaced now with a little girl who has opinions about her hair, asks her mom to paint her nails, and will soon be spending most of her day at school, under the care of a teacher I have yet to meet. These days, I find myself wishing I could turn back the clock so I could more fully experience London’s first five years: I’d work fewer hours, spend more time playing on the floor with her, and share her wonder as she focuses on the flight path of butterflies. I want London to know how much joy she has added to my life and to tell her that I have done the best I could. I want her to understand that even though her mother has always been with her, I have loved her as much as any father could possibly love a daughter. Why, then, I sometimes wonder, do I feel as if that’s not enough?

Lizzie had once briefly toyed with the idea of studying developmental psychology—she’d never much liked children, but she did love the idea of them as natural-born physicists, the theory that babies began life as miniature Aristotelians and only by trial and error discovered Galilean inertia and Newtonian motion, every toddler a live-action Wile E. Coyote, running off the cliff and learning gravity on the way down. It occurred to her now to imagine a moral philosophy taking shape in the same way, baby Hobbeses and little Lockes bumping into sin and consequence.

How was she meant to let go ? Sometimes, instead of having a single daughter, it felt as if she were grieving the loss of hundreds. The baby that clung to her little finger. The toddler who squealed with delight at her first steps. The small girl who said "I love you" for the first time with no ceremony and without realising it almost broke Maggie's heart with joy. The teenager who broke down when she needed Mum one last time. It was like her daughter disappeared over and over again. All those incredible people who Maggie would never meet again, some of whom were remembered only by her. And she felt colossal loneliness at the realisation.

Once in an art gallery, I came upon a painting of the Madonna holding her toddler in one arm and an open book in her opposite hand. Her eyes are turned toward her child as if she has just been torn from her reading. Heavily lidded, they exude a look of sweet adoring, but they also carry a wistful expression, the sigh of interruption, the veiled craving for her book pages. It was like observing a conflict at the hub of my existence. Baby or book. Children or writing. Motherhood or career. I bought the painting and hung it prominently in the living room. In secret, I sympathized with the self-actualizing side of the Madonna, feeling her perturbation at the child’s demands.

I had to ask Scottie what TYVM meant, because now that I’ve narrowed into her activities, I notice she is constantly text-messaging her friends, or at least I hope it’s her friends and not some perv in a bathrobe. “Thank you very much,” Scottie said, and for some reason, the fact that I didn’t get this made me feel completely besieged. It’s crazy how much fathers are supposed to know these days. I come from the school of thought where a dad’s absence is something to be counted on. Now I see all the men with camouflage diaper bags and babies hanging from their chests like little ship figureheads. When I was a young dad, I remember the girls sort of bothered me as babies, the way everyone raced around to accommodate them. The sight of Alex in her stroller would irritate me at times—she’d hang one of her toddler legs over the rim of the safety bar and slouch down in the seat. Joanie would bring her something and she’d shake her head, then Joanie would try again and again until an offering happened to work and Alex would snatch it from her hands. I’d look at Alex, finally complacent with her snack, convinced there was a grown person in there, fooling us all. Scottie would just point to things and grunt or scream. It felt like I was living with royalty. I told Joanie I’d wait until they were older to really get into them, and they grew and grew behind my back.

...I drag the kids to the farmers' market and fill out the week's cheap supermarket haul with a few vivid bunches of organic produce...Once home, I set out fresh flowers and put the fruit in a jadeite bowl. A jam jar of garden growth even adorns the chartreuse kids' table...I found some used toddler-sized chairs to go around it...It sits right in front of the tall bookcases...When the kids are eating or coloring there, with the cluster or mismatched picture frames hanging just to their left, my son with his mop of sandy hair, my daughter just growing out of babyhood...they look like they could be in a Scandinavian design magazine. I think to myself that maybe motherhood is just this, creating these frames, the little vistas you can take in that look like pictures from magazines, like any number of images that could be filed under familial happiness. They reflect back to you that you're doing it - doing something - right. In my case, these scenes are like a momentary vacation from the actual circumstances of my current life. Children, clean and clad in brightly striped clothing, snacking on slices of organic plum. My son drawing happy gel pen houses, the flourishing clump of smiley-faced flowers beneath a yellow flat sun. To counter the creeping worry that I am a no-good person, I must collect a lot of these images, postage-stamp moments I can gaze upon and think, I can't be fucking up that bad. Can I?

If Mom is convinced that ballet lessons are a must, she should take them. Although it may look odd to see a thirty-year old woman hang- ing onto a bar and flinging a slightly plump leg in the air, the sight is not as pathetic as seeing her seven-year old daughter grimly going through such motions just to please her mother, when she would prefer to be at home designing new doll clothes. Although some parents are never quite ready to accept this fact, the child is not one of our possessions. We don’t own him; we never will. We gave birth to his body; he may share some of our physical characteristics; but he does not inherit our desires. He’s a different person, a separate entity, with his own likes and dislikes. It’s a grave mistake to try to override a child’s power of choice in what he wants to be and do. Some parents do this in an attempt to live their lives through the child.

So let’s imagine for now that our love for our children and our thankfulness for their existence is a given. Let’s imagine that no one can possibly doubt the depths of our feelings for our sons and daughters. Let’s imagine that everyone in the world knows exactly how much we love all the many things there are to love about our children and the relationships we have with them. Let’s imagine that we are all most definitely Good Moms, and, with all that on our side, admit for a moment what we don’t love. I’ll give you my list, you add your own. I don’t love every minute of going to the playground. I don’t love every minute of going to the museums. I don’t love every minute of watching Elmo. I don’t love every minute of having to wake up early in the morning. I don’t love every minute of having interrupted sleep at night. I don’t love every minute of having to be the one to make the rules and the one who must enforce them. I don’t love every minute of laundry. I don’t love every minute of changing diapers. I don’t love every minute of having to endure the stares of people when my child freaks out in public. I don’t love every minute of making food that my kid ends up throwing on the floor. I don’t love every minute that I have the Barney song stuck in my head. I don’t love every minute of having to reason with a tantrum-throwing toddler. I don’t love every minute of being peed on, pooped on, and thrown-up on. I don’t love every minute of weaning. I don’t love every minute of sidewalk chalk. I don’t love every minute of having to pick up the blocks fifteen times a day. I don’t love every minute of putting my life on hold. I don’t love every minute of tantrums. I don’t love every minute of going to story time at the library. I HATE the Teletubbies. I don’t love every minute of being chained to someone else’s routine. I don’t love every minute of not being able to go to the bathroom without company. I don’t love every minute of being a mother.

5236 rue St. Urbain The baby girl was a quick learner, having synthesized a full range of traits of both of her parents, the charming and the devious. Of all the toddlers in the neighbourhood, she was the first to learn to read and also the first to tear out the pages. Within months she mastered the grilling of the steaks and soon thereafter presented reasons to not grill the steaks. She was the first to promote a new visceral style of physical comedy as a means of reinvigorate the social potential of satire, and the first to declare the movement over. She appreciated the qualities of movement and speed, but also understood the necessity of slowness and leisure. She quickly learned the importance of ladders. She invented games with numerous chess-boards, matches and glasses of unfinished wine. Her parents, being both responsible and duplicitous people, came up with a plan to protect themselves, their apartment and belongings, while also providing an environment to encourage the open development of their daughter's obvious talents. They scheduled time off work, put on their pajamas and let the routines of the apartment go. They put their most cherished books right at her eye-level and gave her a chrome lighter. They blended the contents of the fridge and poured it into bowls they left on the floor. They took to napping in the living room, waking only to wipe their noses on the picture books and look blankly at the costumed characters on the TV shows. They made a fuss for their daughter's attention and cried when she wandered off; they bit or punched each other when she out of the room, and accused the other when she came in, looking frustrated. They made a mess of their pants when she drank too much, and let her figure out the fire extinguisher when their cigarettes set the blankets smoldering. They made her laugh with cute songs and then put clothes pins on the cat's tail. Eventually things found their rhythm. More than once the three of them found their faces waxened with tears, unable to decide if they had been crying, laughing, or if it had all been a reflex, like drooling. They took turns in the bath. Parents and children--it is odd when you trigger instinctive behaviour in either of them--like survival, like nurture. It's alright to test their capabilities, but they can hurt themselves if they go too far. It can be helpful to imagine them all gorging on their favourite food until their bellies ache. Fall came and the family went to school together.

1. Hassle. 2. Less time just the two of us. (Try no time just the two of us.) 3. Other people. (PTA meetings. Ballet teachers. The kid’s insufferable friends and their insufferable parents.) 4. Turning into a cow. (I was slight, and preferred to stay that way. My sister-in-law had developed bulging varicose veins in her legs during pregnancy that never retreated, and the prospect of calves branched in blue tree roots mortified me more than I could say. So I didn’t say. I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.) 5. Unnatural altruism: being forced to make decisions in accordance with what was best for someone else. (I’m a pig.) 6. Curtailment of my traveling. (Note curtailment. Not conclusion.) 7. Dementing boredom. (I found small children brutally dull. I did, even at the outset, admit this to myself.) 8. Worthless social life. (I had never had a decent conversation with a friend’s five-year-old in the room.) 9. Social demotion. (I was a respected entrepreneur. Once I had a toddler in tow, every man I knew—every woman, too, which is depressing—would take me less seriously.) 10. Paying the piper. (Parenthood repays a debt. But who wants to pay a debt she can escape? Apparently, the childless get away with something sneaky. Besides, what good is repaying a debt to the wrong party? Only the most warped mother could feel rewarded for her trouble by the fact that at last her daughter’s life is hideous, too.)

After loud overtures from his daughters, Anthony finally left the house and went up the winding path to the “museum,” to the mobile home where he and his parents had lived from 1949 to 1958. It has been left untouched. The furniture, tables, the paint on the walls, the ’50s cabinets, the dressers, the closets, are all unchanged, remaining as they once were. And in her closet in the bedroom, past the nurse’s uniform, far away in the right-hand corner on the top shelf, lies the black backpack that contains Tatiana’s soul. Every once in a while when she can stand it—or when she can’t stand it—she looks through it. Alexander never looks through it. Tatiana knows what Anthony is about to see. Two cans of Spam in the pack. A bottle of vodka. The nurse’s uniform she escaped from the Soviet Union in that hangs in plastic in the museum closet, next to the PMH nurse’s uniform she nearly lost her marriage in. The Hero of the Soviet Union medal in the pack, in a hidden pocket. The letters she received from Alexander—including the last one from Kontum, which, when she heard about his injuries, she thought would be the last one. That plane ride to Saigon in December 1970 was the longest twelve hours of Tatiana’s life. Francesca and her daughter Emily took care of Tatiana’s kids. Vikki, her good and forgiven friend, came with her, to bring back the body of Tom Richter, to bring back Anthony. In the backpack lies an old yellowed book, The Bronze Horseman and Other Poems. The pages are so old, they splinter if you turn them. You cannot leaf, you can only lift. And between the fracturing pages, photographs are slotted like fragile parchment leaves. Anthony is supposed to find two of these photographs and bring them back. It should take him only a few minutes. Cracked leaves of Tania before she was Alexander’s. Here she is at a few months old, held by her mother, Tania in one arm, Pasha in the other. Here she is, a toddler in the River Luga, bobbing with Pasha. And here a few years older, lying in the hammock with Dasha. A beaming, pretty, dark-haired Dasha is about fourteen. Here is Tania, around ten, with two dangling little braids, doing a fantastic one-armed handstand on top of a tree stump. Here are Tania and Pasha in the boat together, Pasha threateningly raising the oar over her head. Here is the whole family. The parents, side by side, unsmiling, Deda holding Tania’s hand. Babushka holding Pasha’s, Dasha smiling merrily in front.

Supporting the grieving process The grief associated with a toddler’s separation from caregivers with whom he has had a strong attachment is unavoidable. To try to deny or avoid displays of grief is magical thinking on the part of adults. Acknowledging and supporting their child’s grief is one of the first acts of love adoptive parents can give their new son or daughter. The more directly involved toddlers are in the preparation and transition process, the less confused they will be about what is happening to them and the less they will rely on magical thinking to explain the loss of former caregivers. The more concrete the transition and placement processes are, the more toddlers will be able to process what is happening, and the less they will be fearful. Talking to toddlers during the preparation for and adjustment to a change in placement is intended to support grieving by confronting their magical thinking and assuring them that they are not responsible for the loss. Toddlers need to be told who will take care of them and be assured that someone will be with them at all times during the transition. Other messages that support the toddler’s grieving include: “It was not your fault that you moved. You didn’t do anything bad. It’s OK for you to cry and be mad. I’ll be right here to take care of you.

One of the most important resiliencies for adoptive parents of toddlers is nurturing their own sense of humor and playfulness. Laughter is medicine for the soul; it serves a restorative function; it helps people keep their perspective; and it even enhances attachment. One of my most prized possessions is a poem my daughter wrote for Mother’s Day when she was 11. In her poem, titled, “Why I Love My Mother,” she describes me as having “laughing eyes filled with love.” I can’t think of a better compliment.

So for people who do not wish to vaccinate their children, let me say that raising children seems very difficult. My job, as I see it, is to support my friends in their child-rearing decisions. They want to send their toddler off to a Swiss boarding school? That’s great! Four-year-olds who know how to play polo inspire not only admiration but terror, which in my mind means respect! They’re going to let their daughter choose her own name and send her to a hippie academy where the students learn to draw instead of read? Also great! It sounds like Princess Jellybean Frostina Elsa will be very creative or, as she would write, “!!☺ ☺****☺!!

In the evenings, with the light good for nothing but spinning and skeining, they joined the other women in the household in their gemæcce pairs, old woman with old, young with young, women who had woven and spun and carded together for years, through first blood and marriage and babies, who had minded each other’s crawling toddlers and bound each other’s scraped youngsters, and wept as each other’s sons and daughters died of the lung wet, or at hunt, or giving birth to their own children-all while they spun and carded and wove, shared and scritched and sowed.

Our child has better things to do. Sometimes not following directions is a good thing, because it reflects our child’s healthy, delightful instinct to learn the way young children learn best — through play, exploration, and following inner-direction: My daughter is 2.5 years old and when we go to activities (structured playgroups, mom/toddler stuff), she does not follow direction (or very rarely will follow direction). Maybe she will to a degree, but generally speaking, she is the wild flower that is rolling around, running, and dancing circles in the big open room while all the other kids are sitting quietly by their moms’ side…. should I be concerned about this, or leave her to her own exploration (it’s winter here so the big open space to run is a real treat!), or keep on trying to get her to listen to the ‘animator’ who is trying to run a session? – Lenore Hmm… Listen to an “animator” or roll, run, and dance? That’s a tough one.

Given that Dumpty is such a crude, paranoid, petulant, cowardly, vicious liar, con man, and crook, would you want to work in an office where he was in charge? Would you want to join his downtrodden White House staff or the weird cast of characters in his cabinet? Would you want him to invest your life savings for you? Would you want to sit next to him at a dinner party, picnic, or sporting event? Would you want to carpool or (God forbid!) drive cross-country with him? Would you hire him to babysit your toddler or fix him up with your best friend’s daughter? Would you ask him to speak at your own memorial service? If you answer no to all of these questions (and how could you not?) then why in the world would you entrust your country’s future and the future of this fragile planet to him? Pause for a moment and contemplate your own contradictory leanings.

bringing in folding chairs to place in the aisles. She didn’t know Reverend Kelley, but she had met his elder daughter, Kim Randall, through her community service, and her heart went out to the Kelley family. The life of every clergyman in the region was at risk, including Dewan’s life, a thought she could hardly bear. But everyone had to be wondering who the killer would target as his next victim. With her head held high and a brave expression on her face, she entered the sanctuary and found her spot in the front row between Deacon Fuqua and his wife, Dionne. She leaned across and spoke to the deacon. “Should someone adjust the air-conditioning? With so many people packed inside the church, it’s bound to get hot.” “It’s being done,” Deacon Fuqua told her. “Can you believe this crowd? I see God’s hand in this prayer vigil that Dewan organized.” “God’s hand is in everything my husband does,” she said. A flurry of activity up on the podium at the front of the sanctuary gained Tasha’s attention. The members of the choir, decked out in their white and gold robes, were taking their places and preparing to sing God’s praises. She closed her eyes, her every thought a prayer for all those whose hearts were heavy tonight. Patsy and Elliott Floyd had arrived in time to find seats in the middle aisle, a few pews from the back of the building. As she glanced around, Patsy was pleased to see so many of her parishioners here this evening. She had sent out e-mails to the entire congregation and made numerous personal phone calls. Tonight’s prayer vigil was of great importance on several different levels. First and foremost, Bruce Kelley needed the combined strength of this type of group praying. Second, holding this vigil at the black Baptist church went a long way toward bridging the gap between black and white Christians in the area. Third, this was an example of how all churches, regardless of their doctrine, could support one another. And coming together to pray for one of their own would bring strength and comfort to the ministers and their families who were living each day with fear in their hearts. As they sat quietly side by side, Elliott reached between them and took her hand in his. They had been married for nearly thirty years, and they had stayed together through thick and thin. They had argued often in the early years, mostly because Elliott had never been at home and she’d been trapped there with two toddlers. She had not been as understanding as she should have been. After all, Elliott had been holding down a part-time job and putting

Excluding the language barrier, the worst thing in Brazil is being a woman in a very male dominated, looks obsessed culture. I thought the United States was bad when it came to presenting girls with unrealistic body expectations. Brazil is so much worse. Now that I’m raising a daughter, I realize just how bad it is. All girls are called princessa and told not to cry because it’s ugly (Não chora! Vai ficar feia!). I could not find baby girls clothes in any other colour than pink. Toddlers go with their moms to the salons and get mani-pedis. On billboards, in magazines, everywhere you see advertisements for plastic surgery that you can pay for in 20 instalments! Brazil has more plastic surgeries per capita than any country in the world. It will be an uphill battle to raise a girl who does not think makeup is necessary for the gym.

Teenagers and toddlers have a lot in common—I’ve heard some parents refer to their teens as “toddlers on hormones”—with a key commonality being their need to establish that they are an independent state while still submitting to the laws of the reigning government. When your daughter was a toddler, this took the form of loudly refusing to take a bath while simultaneously stripping down and heading toward the tub. As a teenager, she rolls her eyes or takes a tone while doing what you asked her to do. Though your daughter’s resistance will almost certainly irritate you, consider letting it slide. More than that, you could silently admire the impressive defying-while-complying solution that allows her to be a good kid even as she expresses her opposition.

On the ferry back from Büyükada the setting sun’s soft rays scarcely light the faces of my fellow weary travellers sons joke with their fathers daughters sleep on mothers’ laps friends play faded playing cards with an envelope for the missing jack here a toddler’s hand under his chin like a scholar there a family roars with laughter eating sunflower seeds from a pink plastic bag we breathe the crisp marmara sea together suddenly i loved you despite your carnival of violence i love you Humanity! with all your many ifs and your many thens

Tall, muscular, and broad-shouldered, he’d been an obvious hire for the railroad company, but the recruiter had looked at his young wife’s protruding belly and had wanted to hire only him. Disgusted to have to play such games, she batted her eyelashes and, a convincing smile lighting up her pretty face, flexed the muscles of her right arm for show: “I promise, I am a good worker.” She signed the paperwork along with her husband. And cried herself to sleep that night. Something tragic was waiting for them. There had been signs. Only hours after she’d been hired, she had seen warning in the pueblo curandera’s eyes. “Will you please bless my babies?” she had asked when she arrived at the curandera’s home with her toddler daughter in tow. “Of course,” the curandera had said, and invited them in. “Sit, please.” She motioned to her one chair and then to the clean-swept dirt floor beside it for the girl. The curandera kneeled in front my father’s mother. One hand on her pregnant round stomach, the other hand on the little girl’s head, the old woman closed her eyes and breathed slowly, the deep wrinkles of her face smoothing as she concentrated. This quiet stillness continued for minutes. And then: “No!” The curandera yanked her hands away as if she’d felt fire. “The baby?” my father’s mother asked nervously, her hands moving in an instinctive, protective gesture to her middle. “It is a boy,” the curandera said. And then she stared at the little girl and refused to say more. The next morning, the curandera visited my father’s mother. “This is for the girl,” she said, and handed over three slices of candied sweet yam. “Give her some each night before she sleeps.

So here I was, about to put a bullet in my own sweet little daughter’s head. I looked at her through the white mists, which seemed to press memories into my head: Mandy dressed as Christopher Columbus at her preschool play, running offstage into the audience to hug her big sister Beth. Mandy as a toddler, drawing on the wall with lipstick. Mandy as a nursing infant. We’d shared a blissful bond. I’d spent hours holding her, sniffing her cotton-candy-sweet hair. Her life meant more to me than my own.

REAL FATHERS Fathers who protect their children deserve appreciation. These are gatherers of food who fend off starvation. Fees are paid in full; there's never depreciation. Daughters and toddlers are safe under their nation. They prove that their children come first. Payroll to payload, they're there to play their verse. Main role, second role, they're there to nurse. Male role, great role, they stop the abandonment curse. Their kids' needs are satisfied, they're never hollow. Their kids feel prioritised, the rest follow.  

Mom spoke so self-righteously about going to rehab and cleaning up her act when I was a toddler, and considered her struggle with alcoholism to be such ancient history that she would drink casually with Danko as if it wasn’t a big deal…

Charles stood frozen, afraid to come any closer.  Amy turned her head on the pillow and smiled at him, her eyes suddenly misty beneath their fan of thick black lashes.  For a long moment the two gazed at each other; then Charles moved forward, toward the bed, toward the crying child.  He never noticed that Juliet and the midwife stole from the room. "Amy," he breathed, staring down at the tiny, wailing bundle that their love had made.  "Oh, Amy . . ." "Want to hold her?" Charles paled, unable to forget when Gareth had asked him much the same thing before placing Charlotte in his arms.  He remembered the terrible awkwardness of that moment, the crushing love he'd thought to feel for the toddler but hadn't, the mixed hurt and relief when Charlotte had suddenly started crying and reached for Gareth.  Now, he stood frozen and uncertain, desperately wanting to hold the baby, desperately afraid to for fear that it would be a repeat of the last time he'd held his own flesh-and-blood.  Especially as this one was a red-faced, black-haired, puckered bundle of screaming misery. "Go ahead," Amy prompted.  "She won't bite." Swallowing hard, Charles reached down. Put his hands around his tiny daughter. And gingerly picking her up, cradled her tiny body to his chest. Instantly, the baby stopped crying — and Charles felt as though the mallet of the gods had just smote him across the heart.  A wall of emotion nearly cracked his chest and closed his throat, and for a moment he could do nothing but gulp back the huge lump there as he cupped the baby's head in his palm and stared reverently down at her.  With a shaking hand, he touched one curled, tiny fist.  Smoothed the downy-soft hair.  Kissed the red and wrinkled brow and then, moisture sparkling on his own gold lashes, he looked over at Amy, whose eyes were dark with love as she watched the two of them together. "I think she's going to be Papa's little girl," she said softly. "Oh, Amy," he blurted, in a raw, hoarse voice.  "Oh, dearest, the world itself is not big enough to hold all the love I have for you . . . for this little girl.  Thank you for making me the happiest man in England — not just once this year, but twice."  Still cradling his daughter, he got down on his knees before the bed, took Amy's arm, and, kissing her palm, pressed it to his cheek to stop the sudden flood of emotion. A

daughter

Across Europe, millions of people worked at home along with their whole families. If the mother and father wove cloth, the children worked too: a ten-year-old sorted cotton; a teenage daughter spun thread; an older son tended the sheep and sheared their wool. Even a toddler might help by winding thread carefully onto a roll! When the family finished making their cloth, they would travel to market and sell it, using the money to buy food and tools. In the summer, they might spend more time tending their garden plot of carrots, cabbages, and beans; in the winter, when frost covered the ground, the family would go back to making cloth all day long.

Indeed, we made a grave and painful mistake when we were not ready. Still, the most terrible mistake was that of the enemy, the enemy whose "great heroes" murdered, massacred, raped, and butchered toddlers, the elderly, girls, and boys, burned down houses with living humans inside and committed the worst crimes against humanity. This enemy brought destruction and disaster to his cities and his people. An enemy who displays the book "Mein Kampf" by Hitler proudly in the rooms of his house and whose summer camps were camps of murderous brainwashing and blind hatred. An enemy who thought he knew us and underestimated the bravery of our sons and daughters until he saw with his own eyes how "a people that rises like a lion leaps up like a lion.