I never knew or thought that a barely 16 month-old child could be such a cleanliness freak. My impressions of toddlers that age are active, busy, dirty, and definitely not having a care whether his/her hand is dirty!
Janelle is like my vacuum-cleaner at home, spot-checking the house daily for specks of dust or dirt, and diligently picking them up with her tiny fingers and calling out "meh-may" (her version of "mummy") and showing the dirt to me. She'll also pick up strands of hair on the floor and pass them to me. That aside, whenever her hands are dirty, she would stretch out the dirty hand and insist that I clean it before she continues with whatever she is doing! And when I say "dirty", I mean like when there is some water on her hands, or just one grain of rice, or whatever. And when she steps onto something on the floor (water, dust, etc), she will call "meh-may" and stand on one leg, lifting up the foot which is dirty, and wait for me to 'rescue' her by cleaning the foot before she continues walking. Whenever we drop something on the floor, she will also keep pointing at it and insist that it's picked up before she is satisfied.
Well, I guess I'm glad that she has a low tolerance for dirt and tardiness! She takes after both Royston and my genes in that, for sure. It also does help a lot in keeping the house neat and tidy, since she does the spot-check all the time!
