It’s really exciting watching your baby become a toddler. Suddenly, they’re real people – complicated characters with idiosyncrasies, senses of humour and... the ability to get so, so angry.
Whether due to tantrums, newfound abilities or ongoing struggles with bodily functions, having a toddler seems to involve a lot of stuff becoming airborne.
From best to worst, here’s everything your little big person might find a way to send hurtling towards you.
Balls
If your two-year-old is throwing a ball, you’re doing alright. Even more so if they suddenly have a fluke moment of superhuman strength and slam it into the side of your head. Hear me out.
Throwing is a hard thing to master – so doing it deliberately with something designed to be thrown can only be applauded.
Cuddly toys
They’re not going to smash, and the odds are anything you have in your house that could be broken by a cuddly toy is already broken, so go for it, kiddo. Throw that cow down the stairs. Life’s too short to intervene.
Wee
Toddlerhood brings potty training along with it, which means more direct exposure to urine than the nappy years – and it’s surprising how inoffensive it becomes pretty quickly. (Only directly, though. If you accidentally kick a potty full of standing wee over, you have to move house.)
Shoes
In the immortal words of Austin Danger Power, who throws a shoe?
Clothes
Few things get the ol’ stress-vein in the forehead bulging like a drawerful of neatly folded clothes being distributed across the room by a child who, despite happily wearing every item presented to them several times before, is aggressively unimpressed with the wardrobe options on offer.
Dinner
Dinner being thrown is upsetting on a number of levels. Getting covered in it is pretty crap; you have a vested interest in your child eating; and, if you’ve cooked the meal in question, it’s hard not to take it being flung as a fairly bad review (“It’s a two-star, but it reads like a one”). Mealtimes are stressful as it is, and an unexpected handful of beans to the face doesn’t improve anyone’s evening.
Vomit
Vomit is fairly unpleasant, obviously, but by this stage it’s hopefully enough of a rarity that if it’s happening, Junior’s not very well. If your kid is smooshing bolognese in your hair you’re fully aware of how disgusting that is, but if they’re all poorly, you’re a bit too occupied with worrying about them to mind the nastiness too much. Then, once it’s over and they’re okay, you can be appalled at the sick-soaked monster you’ve become.
Milk
The only cool way to get any drink thrown in your face is to deliver a really withering bon mot that leaves your nemesis flustered enough that they fling their Martini at you and storm out. That’s at least slightly badass. Having a cup of milk dunked all over you by a child that insists they aren’t thirsty is awful, just awful. You look like a maniac, your trousers stink, you’ve got really cold knees. Appalling.
Sand
“Darling. Darling. Stop doing. Stop. Stop doing that with the sand, darling. Please, you’re – it’s in my eyes. It’s in my eyes, you fu – just, please, stop throwing the sand, please, darling, please. You’re going to blind Daddy. Please. Darling. Please. God DAMN IT.”
Cereal
Picking cereal up from a milk-sodden carpet is a maddening task. As you lift each individual Rice Crispie between your middle finger and thumb, dropping it into the palm of your other hand until you have enough of them to do something with, you move infinitesimally closer to fully losing your mind.
Poo
Poo is sort of a wild card. If poo’s being launched at you – properly launched – then you should probably ask yourself if you deserve it. There’s projectile diarrhoea, of course. But just, some poo? Being launched? Your child is a villain.
Snot
A lot of toddlers have permasnot – glimmering twin trails from their nostrils to their top lip that are truly horrific. If you ever become an actor and need to look nauseous on cue, imagine a child with a cold eating an ice-cream. It’s ungodly. But when it’s launched by a sneeze, snot becomes even worse, travelling absurdly fast, inexplicably multiplying in size and somehow, whatever angle everyone is facing, managing to go in your mouth at least a little bit.
Plus, if you are a glasses-wearer, bloody hell, it’s like playing Doom. As you smearily de-slime your lenses, it’s impossible to work out if you’re glad you had your specs on or not.
What a hideous problem. What a hideous world.