How to Know You're a Mom - #68 (Can you believe that?!)

It ceases to surprise you when you find your previously-dressed toddler walking around stark naked. After all, she's just practicing her recently-mastered undressing skills.  You also realize the futility of re-dressing her.  Even the beloved footies with the "lock" on the zipper are no match for your little Houdini.

You have finally figured out a good reason to hang on to all of those VHS tapes from your own childhood.  Apparently, they are really fun to play with...and by "play with" you mean "empty out, stir, and inevitably misplace at least two".

While you're glad your toddler entertained herself so well with her puzzles the other morning while you were formulating your grocery list, you wish the final result hadn't been this -

(But since we're working on positivity - it presented the perfect opportunity to clean out the puzzle drawer.)

You know full well to avoid the shoe department of any store with your girls unless you are, in fact, shopping for shoes.  If it were up to your girls, they'd spend an hour or so trying on every pair with glitter and Dora on them, thereby indulging their respective shoe fetishes.  (It starts young and is, apparently, hereditary.)

You and your seven year old laugh at your four year old when she asks why he reads so many "tractor books".  You can't remember a single book about tractors in recent history.  It's only when your husband translates after work that you realize she was talking about chapter books.  Just another example of life being one big game of telephone.

After a couple of days of Hades trying to get your crib-climbing toddler to nap when she's fully aware that she can get up and go do something else, you put your problem solving skills to test and turn the crib around to see if the extra inches on the side and back are enough to contain her.  She managed to get out once, but you guess that was scary enough that she didn't try again.  Mom - 1, Toddler - 0.  (For now.  You give it a week.)

You thought collecting similar toys in various baskets would be a good method for keeping things organized.  You never imagined, however, that the basket of balls would become a coveted basket of projectile weapons most often used by your toddler at [very] close range.

You discover, from experience, that the safest place for your child after she has shattered a Yankee candle on your kitchen tile is strapped in her high chair with a snack and a front row seat to watch the cleanup.

In preparation for the upcoming soccer season, you ask your four year old one evening if she'd like to play soccer on a team like her big brother.  Her response:  "Not right now.  Maybe tomorrow."  And secretly you're relieved.  You just weren't in the mood to play flashlight soccer right then and there.

When the nursery workers warn you that your toddler got a bump on her face, you reply with the casual, "It's okay.  We're used to it."  Because you really are.  This is just the first black eye of what is sure to be many, many more to come for your wild little one.