After Hubby Dear got home from a long-days’-work the other night, I was sharing with him all my aches and pains, pregnancy woes, and trauma the children had inflicted on me in his absence (okay, so I was dumping on him) and suddenly Mara piped up:

“Mommy? You’re not really. . . crying, but you’re being kind of . . . whiney,” my 2-year-old informed me in the most gracious tone you can imagine with a statement like that. “And big girls don’t whine about a thing like that. So you should stop whining.”

After her soliloquy, she stood silently waiting for my response. Once again, my two-year-old had rendered me speechless.

As you might imagine, my husband was smirking with amusement and hesitantly remarked, “She has a point.”

But Mara also keeps Daddy in line.

For instance, she saw that he hadn’t finished the lunch I sent to work with him. So when he came home, she said, “Daddy? You didn’t eat your chicken. And when you don’t eat your chicken and you leave it sitting out all day, then it goes bad and Mommy has to throw it out. So you should really eat your chicken.” She nodded, for emphasis, and added: “You should eat the lunch that Mommy gave you.”

It’s tough being responsible for parents like these when you’re just two years old.