Maelstroms of Skipper

I just googled "my 18-month-old is horrible"* and got lots of useful hits. You see, my 18-month-old is HORRIBLE. Adorable, but also really, really horrible.

This is a sample of adorable (translations provided):

Me: Skipper, how was your day?

Skipper: Goot. (Good.)

Me: Did you play with your friends?

Skipper: Joppah! Jaypee! Feeese! Sessee! (Gemma! Jamie! Felix! Cecily! Can you believe they were ALL there?!)

Me: What did you do today?

Skipper: Feese. Hat. Bear. (Felix wore a bear hat? Felix got eaten by a bear wearing a hat? Felix pulled a bear out of a hat? Something like that.)

Me: Hm. Did you go to the park?

Skipper: Park! Seeenhg! (We went to the park and I sat in the swing the entire time and insisted on being pushed, because I'm absolutely obsessed with the swing.)

These are other adorable things:

• The hugs
• The blowing of kisses
• The grins.
• The new words.
• The absorbed extended studying of weird things like a box of paper clips.

This is horrible:

• The screaming.
• The whining.
• The incomprehensible demands followed by screaming and whining.
• The insane sibling-rivalry jealousy, with biting.
• The waking up REALLY early and shrieking "Hongee! Poop!"
• The refusal to eat anything that isn't white or brown.
• The rageful loathing of baths.
• The wriggling, screaming, kicking loathing of diaper changes.

The horrible is exacerbated by the poor kid's eczema, which is currently flaring up and driving her nuts. More nuts.

Anyway, it's just normal 18-month-old misery (I hope) and she'll grow out of it, and then I'll miss her chubby little hands and her delighted pleasure in stomping around in rain boots. But at the moment, I'm very, very tired.

*I find it very satisfying to google exact phrases, like "how could anybody possibly vote for John Boehner for a position requiring any sort of competence or ethics?" and sometimes get relevant answers. It's like the world is answering my questions. Or not.