Last night, after a long day at work, I commuted home (at a blistering 10mph), and was greeted at the door by the shrillest dog bark on Earth, a screeching toddler, and the manic sounds of Baby First blasting through our surround sound system.

To say the edge on my day was not taken off upon my arrival home would be an understatement.

Although, to her credit as a wonderful wife and an even better human being, Jen had been working really hard to prepare a fantastic meal for us.

I believe it was a mediterranean chicken recipe.  And quite good.

Although just as I was finishing dinner Daphne decided that  she’d had enough of her high chair, and proceeded to wiggle and/or wail until I took over washing the dishes so Jen could pick her up.

An hour later, as her bath was being drawn and I had her on the changing table, she kept trying to kick the Chubby Squirrel painting off the wall…

This shot is pre-changing table, but it’s that heavy-looking one on the right.  

So I cleverly rotated her torso toward to the wall so she couldn’t kick it anymore.  Which, as it turns out, was just close enough for her to simply reach up and yank it.

Fortunately my Daddy Sense tingled at just the right moment…

The kid’s doing something stupid again!

my hand shot out, and I caught the painting in mid-air, balancing it perfectly on my palm and halting its trajectory toward her chest.

Now under normal circumstances, you feel like a badass when you pull off some ninja stuff like this.  But when your kid is clearly trying to impale themselves with the home décor (and if you’d been half a second slower it might’ve meant a trip to the Redi-clinic), this is not a moment for ego.  Quite the opposite, actually.  It’s more of a, “what in the hell was that about?” moment.

But Daphne, seemingly irritated that I’d not permitted her the trip to the ER that she felt she deserved, quickly reached up and yanked a butterfly decoration off the wall, complete with the anchor and 3″ nail.

I grabbed those with the other hand just as Jen came back into the room to see what all the racket was.  I glared and quickly carried all of the fallen artwork to the hallway closet, muttering obscenities as I went.

After her bath the kid decided to crank the volume up to 11 and just scream as loud as she could until it was finally time for me to pass her down to her mother for her nightly dose of Toddler Drank.  I growled a “goodnightlittlegirl” at her as I did so, and stormed out of the room.

You know, I’m quite certain that someday I’m going to look back on these days of toddlerdom wistfully and with rose-colored glasses.

This post is to remind myself, on that day, that it wasn’t all giggles and cooing, big guy.

j.s.