Tales of a Two-Year-Old

By Naveed Saleh

Two-year-olds do crazy things. My name is Naveed, and I'm a physician-journalist. I spent a year observing my two-year-old and jotting down all the funny things that he does. I then wrote this polished book of short, humorous anecdotes. I wrote this book to not only celebrate my two-year-old but two-year-olds everywhere.

We spend so much of our time worried about money, relationships, work and so forth. All two-year-olds worry about is Popsicles and having fun. Take a break from reality and explore the mind and antics of a typically mischievous (but loving) two-year-old.

Enjoy!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naveed Saleh
• Release date: Apr 23, 2012
• ISBN: 9781476165257

Naveed Saleh

Naveed Saleh is a full-time freelance medical writer and editor. Naveed attained a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, a medical degree from Wayne State University School of Medicine and a master’s degree in science and technology journalism (with an informal concentration in psychology) from Texas A&M University. He has written for numerous publications including The New Physician, Pregnancy magazine, the Johns Hopkins Newsletter: Health After 50, and Science Editor. He’s also an expert blogger at Psychology Today. Naveed won a 2010 Apex Award for a feature titled “Don’t Mess with TCOM.” In his spare time, Naveed likes to play golf, design web sites, paint in oils, walk along the beach, watch movies, listen to music and spend time with his wife and kids.

Book preview

Tales of a Two-Year-Old

By Naveed Saleh, MD, MS

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Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 by Naveed Saleh

All rights reserved.

License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this ebook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover and final photos by professional photographer Rachel Durrent (http://www.RachelDurrent.com). Copyright 2011.

Formatted by Ebook Launch file://localhost/(http/::www.ebooklaunch.com).

To contact the author, please e-mail [e-mail].

For Dad—I miss you. You would have loved Zain. He has your hair.

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My name is Naveed, and I’m Zain’s father. I’m also a writer. When Zain turned two-years-old, I started jotting down observations and taking notes about amusing things that he did. Two-year-olds are funny because their brains are still in the process of developing; consequently, they sometimes do things that only they understand. Because Zain is precocious, he is particularly entertaining.

The setting of this book changes. When I first started writing this book, we were living in Corpus Christi, Texas. (Corpus Christi is a city in southern Texas that’s located on the Gulf of Mexico.) I was just about done with science journalism graduate school, and my wife, Georgia, had just completed family medicine residency. Furthermore, my wife was just about to give birth to our youngest boy, Zaid (whom we affectionately call Zaf-Zaf).

After Zaf-Zaf was born, we moved to San Diego to be closer to my mother. We lived in her house for two months before we moved into our own apartment.

My mother spends a lot of time with Zain. She takes him to swim lessons, to nursery school and to the mall. Zain’s interactions with my mom turned out to be great inspiration for this book. Lots of stories were recounted to me by my mother. For many reasons, without her, this book wouldn’t be possible.

Another character in this book is my younger brother, Faf. Faf is a pediatrician who lives in New York City. He’s single and flies to San Diego a few times a year. Because Zain has accompanied us to the airport to pick up or drop off my brother, Zain thinks that Uncle Faf lives on an airplane. (Every time Zain sees a plane overhead, he screams Uncle Faf!)

I split this collection of anecdotes into 3 periods: our time in Corpus Christi, our transition through my mom’s house in San Diego and our apartment life in San Diego. Of note, our apartment is only 10 minutes away from my mother’s house.

I hope that you enjoy reading this little book just as much as I enjoyed writing it. For your entertainment, I included pictures of Zain. (Believe me, he’s not the easiest guy to take pictures of!)

Part 1: Our Time in Corpus Christi

Santee!

Two-year-olds and Christmas can be an irritating combination. This Christmas season, Zain soon became obsessed with Santa and would shriek Santee! whenever he saw something Santa-related—a caricature, Christmas lights or even a bearded, overweight elderly man at the grocery store.

So when our neighborhood Santa set up shop at a local mall, paying $25 for a picture with the portly poser seemed like a no-brainer. After standing in queue for two hours, we finally entered Santa’s art-deco crib decked out like the North Pole, which seemed way out of place in the unseasonably hot Texas weather. We were efficiently ushered to a couple of seats next to Old Saint Nick himself, and that’s when Zain went berserk.

Apparently, Zain was more attracted to the idea of Santa than the reality of meeting the man himself. As soon as Zain sat in the old man’s lap and stared into his bloodshot blue eyes, Zain became scared and started screaming. Zain reached for my wife’s shirt and nearly ripped it off in the process. (Thankfully, Kris Kringle averted disaster and undid Zain’s kung-fu grip.)

I give it up to the professional photographer and his elfin assistant. The photog separated my wife from Zain and distracted Zain with a shiny bauble on a stick. After a series of rapid-fire shots, the photographer procured the picture he needed. Santa then plied Zain with several packs of peppermint bark and so ended our odyssey—well, until next year that is.

Zain: the writer’s worst enemy

I spend most of my time writing for money. Occasionally, this practice doesn’t sit well with Zain, Oftentimes, he stalks me from a distance, and when he sees that I’ve taken a bit of a break, he steals into the room and slides into my chair. When I come back, he’s managed to mar any piece of writing that I’ve been carefully crafting on my computer, and replace my prose with lines and lines or—if I’ve been gone long enough—pages and pages of meaningless text. He’s also been able to disable Pandora (my Internet radio service of choice) or tap into my QuickBooks account and mess around with my finances.

I do my best to fix any resultant mess, but I’m sometimes unsuccessful. Whenever editors question an extra period or misspelled word, all I can think of is that Zain was with me that day and helped co-author my most recent piece.

The Battle of the Pebble

One day, Zain was standing on a park bench when he slipped. There was little that could be done—it was a freak accident. When he fell to the ground, he smacked his head on to a pebble. The pebble was the size of a pea but managed to cut his forehead. (I bet if somebody were to sneak that pebble into a sandwich, I would unknowingly ingest it.) We rushed him to the emergency room.

For some reason, I freaked out and requested that the emergency room physicians do a CT scan. (My uncle who is a pediatrician planted this idea in my head.) I was worried that the pebble may have caused his brain to bleed. The emergency room physician thought I was an idiot and tried to dissuade me from exposing