Chronicles of Parenting: Why Toddlers Are Like Turkeys

You know that Thanksgiving is right around the corner because 2016 holiday season advertising is beginning to fill the stores and the airwaves. With only ATE days until “I 8 Too Much Today” Day, here are a few reasons why toddlers and turkeys have so much in common.

Have you ever noticed that toddlers and turkeys have a lot in common? For example:

1. They both make you very tired: one from tryptophan and the other from moving their mouths and limbs at 1000 miles per minute.
2. Both run away when you try to catch them: though they have different reasons for this, they are both highly motivated to stay out of your grasp.
3. They both eat food off the ground: turkeys peck at seeds in the barnyard or forest; toddlers have no problem helping themselves to that raisin they dropped on the carpet three days before.
4. Neither can fly, but this doesn’t keep them from trying: one has wings and aims for the branch of a nearby tree; the other wears a cape and launches himself off the back of the couch.
5. They both get food all over them: one gets smothered in gravy and cranberry sauce, the other gets covered in just about everything at mealtimes, from spaghetti to cream cheese, despite a napkin and a bib.
6. They are both comical: one has that ridiculous red wattle dangling from its face while the other sometimes puts pants on his head.
7. They both tend to waddle: one has skinny little legs holding up a round body; the other has chubby legs and a bulky diaper gradually filling to capacity.
8. They express themselves with unique and incomprehensible sounds: one gobbles, and the other sometimes speaks with gibberish simply to entertain himself.
9. They’re both scrumptious: of course you don’t want to actually eat your toddlers, but sometimes they’re so cute you could just “eat them up.”

Have a trypto-phan-tasitic Thanksgiving!

Jocelyn Jane Cox is a  freelance writer and author. Her 2012 humor book on life in the New York suburbs, The Homeowner’s Guide to Greatness: How to handle natural disasters, design dilemmas and various infestations, is available on Amazon.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JocelynJaneCox.