Determined or Demented?

Last night, Piper treated us to a performance piece that was hilarious, but, of course, for me also troubling. Like a soul afire, she moved all her chairs from one side of the living room to the other with a quickness and determination I haven't seen outside an Army recruiting video. She would push one about 10 feet up against our refrigerator, scoop up an armful of toys, dump them into the seat and then yell "OH!" and run to the next chair and do the same. She did this with 3 chairs in one direction and then repeated it in reverse. It was cute and it reminded me of a similar scenario played out in May aboard the unfortunately named Goodtime III - a cruise boat that tours Lake Erie in Cleveland. As you can see in the accompanying photo, here too she became possessed with the notion that the deckchairs on the Goodtime III needed to be rearranged (sending most of the elderly passengers into a full-on post traumatic stress moment in remembrance of the Titanic). She moved 8 deckchairs from one side of the boat to the other with maniacal force in about 10 minutes, which is saying a lot for a kid who takes about the same amount of time to climb the 3 stairs into her daycare. It's also reminiscent of her latest ritual during daycare drop-off in which she circles me like a shark about 300 times before I finally break free and run. The teachers think it's cute, last night Jaime, our friend and I laughed and during the Goodtime III episode, she had most of the boat rooting for her fruitless effort. And yet I can't help but think that this behavior is quite reminiscent of captive animals in zoos and aquariums. You know, the kind that pace/swim back and forth relentlessly in their cages or tanks and then rip the head off of their feeders - I'll spell out for the slower readers here that Piper is the caged polar bear and I am her keeper in this scenario. I've sometimes had the thought that having a toddler in our house is much like those lunatics who keep chimpanzees as pets and dress them in bow ties only to be shocked when they go beserk at their own birthday party in the park during which the chimp literally chews the ass off of his formerly beloved "Dad." It happens, OK, watch Animal Planet...the guy has no ass. I've put those thoughts aside as Piper has grown, learned to talk, shown love (at least to our dogs - see post below) and subtly chipped away at my fear instincts. This most recent spate of "caged beast" behavior has woken me from my stupor, thank god, and I'll go back to my former vigilance. As the parent of a toddler, you let your guard down at your own peril. As the guy who was found in the belly of his 8-foot pet alligator last year in Fort Lauderdale learned way too late, you have to remember that there is danger lurking in every bathtub.