How To Know if You Have an 18-Month Old: A Checklist of Sorts

1. Thomas the Train's theme song is the soundtrack of your dreams and occasionally your nightmares. ("They're two, they're four, they're six, they're eight/shunting trucks and pulling freight..."). Does anyone even know what "shunting" means?

2. You frequently find old boogers on your sofa cushions (wiped there by someone attempting to climb up face-first.)

3. You have phone conversations punctuated by shouts of "no, No, NO!" throughout (usually regarding someone attempting to "use" your computer by banging a plastic truck on the keyboard).

4. You wonder if you will ever again be able to take a shower/change clothes/use the restroom without being observed by someone with a toy duck in one hand and a handful of cheerios in the other.

5. You think of a visit to the grocery store without your child as "getting out" and "time to yourself."

6. Your belief that you could never spank your sweet baby went out the window after the third incidence of a sippy cup full of grape juice pressed upside down into the carpet.

7. Pages of the magazine you just received in the mail have partial pages missing (which you discover later were actually eaten by your child/farm animal).

8. Things go missing with no explanation until you find them in your sock drawer along with an old piece of cheese.

9. You find a bottle of vitamins, a plastic Easter egg, and half a cookie stuffed in the side compartment of your vacuum cleaner, which explains why it hasn't been running as efficiently as it used to.

10. You discover that after a whole day of having your house ransacked, your energy depleted, and your patience worn thin as a Hollywood actress, that an end of the day, squeeze-the-air-out-of you, chokehold hug from your little guy makes up for it all.