My First “I Have a Toddler” Moment

As my wife and I prepare for our second kid, I wanted to take a moment to remember a funny interaction with my toddler before our family grows.

Table of Contents

• Why I'm Writing This
• The Long Weekend
• I Have an Idea
• Back Home

Why I’m Writing This

Many of you know that I have a kid. You might also know that I have a second one on the way. With my extra time this summer, I’ve been writing a lot more, so this post might be out by the time they’re born. If so, I have two kids!

Anyway, I don’t really like talking about them online. They obviously deserve their privacy, so I don’t even plan to share their names or any pictures. In fact, we have strict rules with our family members to never post pictures of our kids anywhere online. I just want them to have a clean digital presence until they choose what they want to share.

Plus, I absolutely do not and cannot trust a single corporation to not steal photos to train an AI, nor can I trust individuals not to edit or deepfake said photos. Hell, I can’t even trust the government not to use photos for some creepy surveillance network and social credit score system. Though, perhaps my efforts are wasted given the shear amount of cameras, Flock or otherwise, in the environment that are already building up individual profiles of people.

Regardless, I’m not going to turn over personally identifiable information about my kids here, but I do want to use this space to record some memories. Part of why this site even exists at this point is to record aspects of my life over time. I know very little about my parents, and I think it would be cool to have a place where my kids could learn more about me. After all, this site charts almost ten years of my life at this point. It’s a living relic of how I’ve changed over time.

Also, I am somewhat selfishly writing this because I would love to have known more about younger self. I have a really horrible memory, which is great because I never really hold onto pain. But, it’s also sad because I don’t really know how I have personally changed or grown because I’m always living in the moment. So if my kids are anything like me, they might want to know a little bit more about themselves as kids when they’re older. At the very least, I know my toddler won’t remember how she was, so all the memories made now will only be for my wife and me.

Therefore, I want to spend some time today writing about the first time I really felt like, “oh, I have a toddler now.” For folks who aren’t parents, it’s not like you have a baby that suddenly becomes a toddler. They sort of morph and change slowly over time. But, toddlers have a certain reputation for being difficult, and I had one such moment that will live with me for a while. Hopefully, this doesn’t come off embarrassing for my kid because I’ve found the moment to be really endearing. It’s a story I plan to share when they’re older.

The Long Weekend

To setup this story, I need to give you a bit of context. I love about 3.5 hours away from my hometown. Over the years, we’ve gone back home fewer and fewer times each year. Since having kids, we only go back about twice a year. The issue isn’t really distance. It’s just hard to sit a kid in a car for a solid chunk of the day.

Well, we decided to hold a diaper party back home, so we left Friday afternoon, held the party Saturday, and came back Sunday afternoon. Afternoon is a key bit for this story because we have a sort of routine where we put our toddler down around one o’clock each day for a nap. If we time our drive just right, we should be able to get the kiddo to sleep on the ride.

As it turns out, it had been a while since we had taken that drive, and since kids change a lot over time, our nap-while-driving strategy didn’t pan out. Our kiddo didn’t sleep at all. If you’re wondering what that’s like, just watch this Bluey clip.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, we had the party scheduled for three o’clock, again with the hopes that we could get our kiddo to nap before the party. The trouble was that random family members decided to show up a few hours early, so our toddler once again didn’t really nap.

By the time we set out Sunday, we kind of knew we were in for a long day. If we were lucky, our kiddo would sleep on the drive. Once again, she had other plans. Now, let me set the scene for the fun part.

I Have an Idea

We were about 90 minutes into our trip back when our kid was starting to lose it. They were whining and crying because they didn’t want to be strapped in that seat for a couple more hours. Understandable.

At the same time, my wife really need to use the restroom. Obviously, I was in a tough place as the driver because I have an angry toddler and an angry pregnant woman asking me to stop, and we just got on a stretch of road without exits for next twenty or so minutes.

As my toddler is screaming at me, I start thinking of ways to distract them, so I say something to the effect of, “hey [toddler], I have an idea. Why don’t you try shutting your eyes for a bit? Maybe when you open them, we’ll be home.” Obviously, this isn’t going to work, but I was just trying to get their mind off whatever they were thinking about.

This backfired SPECTACULARLY. My kid just kept uncontrollably crying while saying, “I want an idea.” I was baffled by this. I kept trying to reason with them: “an idea isn’t a physical think you can have.” Of course, they just kept repeating, “I want an idea.”

At that point, I started to play twenty questions with them:

• “Is an idea a food?” “No”
• “Is an idea a toy?” “No”
• “Is an idea clothes?” “No”

We clearly had a different understand of what an idea was, so I panicked, “How about this? I’ll get you some idea chocolate when we stop next.” “OK.”

Great, I bought myself some time. When we got to the gas station, I let my kid pick out some chocolate. In fact, we all kind of got some snacks just to cope with the remainder of the trip. Then, we sat in the car for a bit while munching down our treats. After that, I had to be the bad guy and strapped the kiddo back into the car seat.

Back Home

I don’t really remember how the rest of the drive went, but there obviously wasn’t going to be a nap that day. In any case, we decided to have some leftovers from the party for dinner, which were basically a variety of taco meats and sides. After warming up some chicken, I start putting together a couple of tacos.

At that point, my kid turned to me and said, “I want an idea,” while pointing at our food. Oh my god, I thought. They’re talking about TORTILLAS. This whole time they wanted a tortilla, not an idea! What a massive relief it was to finally know what they wanted.

That said, the full day trauma of not knowing what an “idea” was will live with me forever. I mean our toddler says words all the time that we don’t understand, but we can usually get them to show us what they mean. In this case, while trapped in a car on the interstate, there was just no way to work out what they wanted. I’m just glad to finally know what it was.

Anyway, I hope that was a fun change of pace for anyone reading, and I hope this is a fun story I can share with my kids later. In the meantime, I don’t have much related content to share, but here are some life-adjacent posts:

• What It Feels Like to Be a Toddler Again: Learning a Language
• Buying a House Sucks
• Nobody Wants to Have Kids

And if you’re willing, I’d love for you to head over to my list of ways to grow the site. At least that way, you can find links to my Patreon and YouTube channels. Otherwise, take care!