Ever feel like your life with a toddler is a darn close replica of the Louis Griffin/ Stewie relationship? Ever wonder if your once ‘little precious baby’ transitioned into a mind-bending sociopath masquerading in the form of guiltless curly haired cuteness? Say no more, I hear you.

Noah. Noah James Gregory. 18 months old. Curly blond innocent locks with huge bold blue eyes like never ending oceans. The daycare’s ‘teacher’s pet’ and a face giving even the biggest cynic the impression that butter wouldn’t melt. In public he’s an angel. He blows kisses at strangers in supermarkets. He gives gifts to people in the form of half eaten food, teddy bears and rubbish he finds on the floor which he deems as valuable. For some reason it’s magnificently adorable.

BUT, behind the closed doors of our family home, my toddler kindly demonstrates his dark and twisted side. So, please find below my 20  reasons why I suspect my toddler is an evil genius:

1. My toddler breaks down and shouts BANANA when we do not have bananas in the fruit ball. I try to bargain with him with an apple. It doesn’t work. I find half a banana in the fridge that I was going to put in his porridge. He stops crying, drops the banana, stands right on it and eats the apple.
2. My partner found a half-eaten apple and his set of car keys in the toilet. Now his car keys don’t work, and I’m tempted to stop buying apples.
3. He throws food on the floor and intently waits for your reaction, he thrives off it.
4. He knows how to turn on the TV and has a huge breakdown when the 6 o’clock news comes on and not Thomas the tank engine.
5. He hides everything. Last week I found furry yellow thing behind his nursery chair that faintly resembled a banana. I can’t quite predict how long it has been there for. Ive given up hope as to where he’s relocated my favourite hairbrush.
6. When he hears the words bed time, he not so coincidentally runs in the total opposite direction of his bedroom. He’s like a young Usain Bolt.
7. You know them times they won’t be picked up and are impressively insistent on the matter ? For us, that’s 10 minutes AFTER I was supposed to be in the car and heading to work and it’s like attempting to pick up a bar of wet soap when you dropped it in the shower.
8. He wants nothing to do with us when we want to play with him, then when we are cooking dinner or just doing general adult things,  he clings to our legs like some kind of Australian marsupial.
9. He smiles politely at the teachers at daycare, says ‘bye bye’ and waves innocently. 3 seconds later he’s screaming in the car park for a cracker and pushing himself away from the car seat. I give him a cracker, I buckle him in. The cracker is still in his hand uneaten when we get home, he just wanted to hold it.
10. He chose to empty a whole bag of multi-bricks all over the living room floor a moment after I have tidied the entire room and we have friends coming over in 10 minutes. I have got relatively used to uttering  the phrase ‘Apologies’ for the state of my house’.
11. He puts dry cat food in the water bowl which he insists on filling it right up until it’s just inedible mush, much to boo-boo the cats apprehension.
12. My toddler is spoilt for choice for his story time before bed. To the stage that I may as well invest in shares with penguin books. But every night my toddler insists on reading ‘don’t let the pigeon drive the bus’ over, and over and over, were I am required to turn the page only whilst he continues to repeat ‘no way’ to the pigeon’s request to drive the flipping bus. I now have a small hatred for pigeons and busses.
13. Is it time to eat? ‘No’. ‘Is it time for bed?’ No. ‘Do you want a cuddle?’ No way. Do you want to go to the park?’ No. ‘Do you love your Mumma?’ No. Is this repetition of this word just in my household?
14. ‘Do you love daddy’ Yes – Ohhhhh you little rascal!!!
15. ‘Here Noah let me wipe your nose with this tissue’ He responds by doing the only reasonable thing by running as far away from me as possible and later wiping said snot on my work clothes. Just sadistic!
16. He challenges himself to see how far he can spread toilet roll around the entire house before he gets caught. Like come on, only Andrex puppies get away with that stunt.
17. When he doesn’t get his own way in the supermarket, he likes to lie on the floor and imitate what I can only explain as a limp and toneless hot dog sausage.
18. He has a toy box to make any kid enviable, but the pen that I am writing with is WAY more interesting. I find myself playing with his toys at a lame attempt of reverse psychology. It concludes with me on the floor putting a farm animals jigsaw together whilst my son is attempting to draw on the cat and singing ‘la la la’.
19. Parent food is always more appetizing to a toddler than what’s in front of them. So whilst Noah’s happily munching away at my fine adult sized cuisine, I’m stuck with some probably overpriced alphabetti spaghetti.
20. He stuck a pea up his nose and sadistically giggled whilst both me and his dad freaked out about how we get it out before his brain inhales it.

So that is but a few things I have took down over the past few months as to why you Noah James, have definitely got a dark side, but just to throw a bit of sentience into it, there Is correspondingly as many reasons as to why I love you like there no tomorrow. Here are but a few of them reasons:

• Because you remind me so much of your Dad, and he’s respectively the most wonderful kindest person in the world. You are going to grow up just like him
• When you aren’t in bitch mode, you give us hugs and you give us kisses which everyday simply intensifies the love I have for you
• The sheer look of pure happiness on your face when I pick you up from daycare after a long day at work is just enough to diminish any negativity and stress that I have built as the days gone by.
• I secretly love reading you that book, because regardless how much I try and hide it in a different place, your clever little ass finds it and I applaud you for your fine determination
• In the times you contract koala syndrome and you refuse to let go of me means you feel secure and loved around me which just solidifies the idea I’m doing alright at this whole parent thing
• You have your own, very strong and independent personality means you are developing your own identity which is so SO clever of you and I’m proud of you for that
• I serious hand on my heart cannot recollect what my life consisted of before you was here.

Love your very tired, and very impatient mummy ❤ Xxx

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Written by Rachel Gregory for her blog, Rach and Noah.

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