Auld Lang Syne for Irate Toddlers

Today, Madeleine was saying something about New Years Eve that didn't sound quite right - I forget how she worded it - but I attempted to set the record straight by saying, "No - tonight we'll have New Year's Eve."

I often misconstrue what Madeleine is saying, and we get into a vicious circle, where she attempts to correct me, but she's doing so on the verge of tears, yelling a bit, and in toddler-talk, which is a minimal variant dialect from baby-talk, and I try to guess what she's saying, and I get it wrong, and she cries and screams more, and tries to correct me in syllables which are yet harder to decipher, and so on... Today, she went into that mode, correcting me, screaming, crying - only on the first pass, and by now I have learned to acknowledge her correction and accept it as if I had a clue as to what she was saying, much as you would do with a crazy person on the verge of some kind of break-down. But it was too late; the girl struck me. Domestic violence.

So as I was correcting her for that act of abuse, Ian provided a deeply sympathetic, wildly implausible explanation for the three-year-old's grief: "I think she's sad about leaving 2011."

(December 31, 2011)