Angry Clown

It’s becoming hard to take Edith seriously. She’s so funny all the time now that she’s a toddler — her little proportions are funny just to look at, and the way she reels around, either flinging her legs out before her in a silly walk or mincing about with her arms up by her face T-rex style, makes me giggle every time she goes by. Her tummy is usually sticking out under her T-shirt and she’s always surprising herself with her own clumsiness or by trying to use an object in a way that it isn’t made for, or misjudging a distance.

When Edith was an infant and she cried, it was as if someone had grabbed my heart and squeezed it, but now when she cries, it’s mostly just hilarious. She only ever cries when she’s been thwarted on something that she wants, and she’s able to go from 0 to 100 and back again on a dime. Like, I will close the pantry door right when Edith thought she was going to get to go in there and pull a seltzer can on her foot, and as if a button has been pressed, she is IMMEDIATELY weeping as if her dearest love had been killed at sea, her eyes and nose fully streaming. If I open the pantry door again, it all stops just as quick and she laughs merrily to herself as she pulls everything off the shelf.

Yesterday I moved my full coffee cup from one side of me to the other as she tried to get at it, which resulted in her running in fast, tight, furious loops all around me, howling in rage. It was the funniest fucking thing I’d ever seen.

I remember how horrible it felt to be a little kid and be genuinely upset about something and for all the surrounding adults to be openly amused at your anger (as an only child, this happened to me fairly frequently). I’m going to try not to do this to Edith, but it’s really hard to remember that she’s not mature enough to understand how ridiculous she’s being.