why are babies always listening to the exact part of the sentence you don’t want them to hear: a memoir

mischief7manager:

so the way my day is scheduled at work is that i’m the closer, meaning that from 4:30 to 6 i’m the only teacher in the room with up to seven toddlers. i have taken to reminding my kids that “ms. [mischief] is not an octopus, i only have two hands” during this portion of the day, but bless their hearts, they’re two years old, they’re developmentally incapable of retaining that information. 

so i’m changing child a’s diaper and child b wants my help with something, idk, getting clothes on a baby doll or whatever. in theory, the kids aren’t supposed to bring materials into the diapering area, b/c germs, but again, two year olds. still working on memory retention.

so this is like the fifth time in two minutes child b has wandered over and it’s the end of the day and i’m maybe a little stressed out so on time number five of being interrupted by a plaintive toddler holding out a baby doll in the direction of my glove-covered hands, i finally snap.

“[child b],” i say, in my most patient teacher voice, “i am helping [child a] with their diaper right now. i will help you with the baby when i am done. i can’t do two things at once, so can you please step out of the diapering area and wait for like, a hot second?”

and that’s how one of my two year olds spent the rest of the day toddling around the room cheerfully repeating “hot second! hot second!” to himself over and over and over again.