Don't Look at Me!; "Saga of a Two Year Old: As Told by an Uncle"

This story is just too funny to not end up in print. 

My brother, a fairly new father, has made me a fairly new Uncle Nick.  He has the cutest two year old with golden locks of hair and an attitude that is one part sweet Cindy Lou-Who and one part Wanda Sykes. She is the type of little girl that everyone lives to make smile, she knows it, and only smiles begrudgingly in return.  But it is so brilliant when she does smile, that she has adults acting like two year olds in their attempt to make her teeth show and her eyes light up. 

I have seen grown men and women take turns talking like a two year old, rolling on the floor, running around the house, playing Ring Around the Rosie, spinning in circles, putting removable stickers on windows, sitting in under-sized chairs to feed fake food to dolls, and the list goes on.  And that is just the stuff I have done in pursuit of that smile.

My brother, Chris, is trying to bring this little bundle of joy into the respectable ranks of regulated society by teaching her how to poop and pee in a tiny fake toilet that will eventually transfer into a real toilet.  Apparently this process works one day and then does not work on another day.  When she goes in the toilet it is a joyous experience and everyone is just delighted.

Then there are the other times.

On these particular times, the lovely little lady does a weebly waddling little walk across the living room that then suddenly and spontaneously, stops. She does a little crouch and makes a face that squeezes up in concentration. My brother, who is sitting on the couch, sits up like a ninja. 

Something is not right, he senses.

He leans forward, alert.  His ears wiggle, listening.  He snaps his head around and zeroes in on the intruder.  Glancing at a new bulge in the back of her big girl under pants he says, "Did you go poopies in your pants?"

Her head swivels around.  Their eyes meet and a little piece of laundry lint blows across the living room floor like a tangled Texas tumbleweed.  Her eyes narrow at first.  Little slits that are clearly wondering how much he knows.  She might be able to get away with it, but then, the traitorous winds of the ceiling fan waft a not-so-sweet scent across the room to smack daddy in the face. 

His eyes go wide. 

Hers go wider. 

She has been discovered.

Lifting her little voice to the heavens she lashes out and screams, "Don't look at me!"  Chris stands up and off she goes, like a bolt of lightning, she careens around the corner of the couch and takes off.  Escape is imminent as she turns the corner and runs along the stairs, past the doggy barricade, into the sitting room, and it is here that she runs out of purchase. My brother strides up to grab her but she dodges left then right and skips past his outreached hand.  She takes half a dozen steps when the weight in her panties is too much for the little fabric and out comes the contents over the back of the elastic.

She stops, turns and looks at it.

Chris takes a drunken step forward and then he too stops.

She looks at him and in one final scream of denial wails yet again, "Don't look at me!"  And onward she runs as my brother stands there.  

He is a beaten man. 

And I am a very amused Uncle.