What is your favourite animal.  Mine is the toddler.  They are almost like cute, small human beings.
 

But they are not really.  Just ask yourself.  What exactly do you remember from the time you were between 2 and 4?  Not a lot.  Do you remember being toilet trained?  There was in fact a time when you had to learn how to speak a language because you didn’t know one yet.  And how do you remember an experience that you had no words for?
 

You can talk to a toddler and they can seem to respond, especially after they learn to talk but they are not really using words in the same way.  I remember telling one of my sons not to fiddle with the wall plugs because they were dangerous.  That was why we had those plastic plugs in the holes.  He nodded and smiled and then proceeded to pull out the plug and try to stick his fingers in.  I grabbed him just in time to receive a very light shock.  See what I mean?
 

But they are cute.  One of my children wanted to play “bad Edmonton” with me by batting around a birdie with a raquet.  They all said “pasghetti” and “keputch”, which gives you a good idea of their culinary tastes.
 

My grandson, who is just over three, seems beyond most of this now, but he is a fast learner and we have great fun together.  The best thing about him is that even when he has an “accident”, I can just hand him over to his parents.
 

As for myself, I remember almost nothing before the age of 3.   At just over 2, I traveled from Hamburg, Germany to Halifax Nova Scotia in a converted troop ship, the former USS General S. D. Sturgess.  Here’s the good part.  I was the only one on the ship who never vomited.   It must have seemed like a giant cradle.
 

In Toronto, I remember standing on the grass, my arms outstretched to help me balance and leaning back to look up an enormous distance to see my father bouncing a ball on his head.  I remember laughing very hard because it was the funniest thing I had ever seen.  Literally.
 

I remember being left in the care of my great aunt by my mother and being scared silly by the pipes which were outside the wall in her kitchen.  They looked like metallic, writhing monsters.  My great aunt who was a kind old lady, did not have any teeth and had a white afro.  How could my parents abandon me with such frightening creatures around?   I cried for an hour until my mother came back.
 

A little later, I was taken to the Polish nuns on McCall Street, who ran a nursery and day care.   The only thing I remember is nap time on a rubber sheet, because I always woke up wet and warm and had to be changed.   The nuns, I think, were not pleased.
 

Around my third birthday and before we moved to our own house, I was sleeping in my great aunt’s attic on a mattress with my mother.  I woke up hot and sweaty and looked out the window at the moon.  The main thing is that my mother rubbed my tummy and I fell back asleep.  Who gets that kind of service today?  Besides, I have air conditioning. 
 

But the best thing I remember is being swung by my parents, one holding each hand as we walked.  I have done the same thing with my own children and with my grandson.  It feels just like flying.
 

So a toddler is the in-between, with complete inchoate darkness at one end and memories coming into the light and words at the other, a sort of angel who has to learn how to walk on the earth and at the same time, a crawling creature who has to stand upright.  Now if I could just get them to go to the bathroom by walking them around the block, I would buy one tomorrow.