Sometimes we jump on beds.
Sometimes we even use power tools.
Under proper supervision and with protective eyewear, of course.
In the Summer, we displace water like mo-fos.
And yeah, when nobody is looking, we eat whipped cream straight from the can.
What?
Apparently my daughter could use a little more flight experience.
And I could use some eyes in the back of my head.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t already have a set there.
Ah, the twos. Known for their terribleness, they represent a tumultuous period in a child’s development. I’ve navigated them four times. They pose many a challenge – the tantrums, the defiance, the lack of reason – the twos make it impossible to sit through a single peaceful meal, to embark on a shopping trip without the subsequent humiliation or migraine, to use the bathroom in privacy.
Recently though I’ve sensed a shift in our atmosphere. My two year old, my toddler is changing. It’s not just the evolution of his verbal skills, he’s different, more wily, devious. While at two he used his raw emotion and noise terrorism to bend us to his will, as he approaches three it seems he’s learning how to manipulate with language and charisma along with the occasional flat out lie.
Last Saturday, during the usual debate among siblings over what movie they would watch on the single living room television, my teen, making an executive decision, plucked “Speed Racer” from the shelf.
“No Speed Racer,” my youngest argued. “Mommy said it broken. It not working.”
“Speed Racer” of course is functioning just fine since it’s still in the shrinkwrap. Later when my daughter called him out on his fabrication, he looked at me and grinned sheepishly. He knew exactly what he was guilty of.
This morning he wanted to play with one of the girl’s board games, one that he has no clue how to actually navigate and will probably end up losing one or all of the crucial, minuscule parts to.
“I play Harry Potter, Mommy.”
“No, honey, you can’t. You’re too little to play with that game.”
He stared at me for a moment. The board games are stacked in a hall closet directly across from my bedroom door where I sat sorting though some stacks of papers.
“Okay, Mommy,” he said, grabbing for my doorknob, “I close your door, okay?”
“No, just leave it open.”
“No, Mommy, I close it.”
We went on like this for a minute or two before I realized he was trying to block my view so he could proceed to completely disregard me and pull out the board game on the sly.
Twos are terrible, but at three…they just get smarter. Oh, what fun awaits.
My two year old is good at hiding.
He’s really good.
He’s expanded his range actually.
He no longer limits his talents to the childhood arena of hide-and-seek games, he has extended his reach. Pushed the envelope of his abilities, if you will.
For no reason whatsoever other than for his own perverse amusement, my darling cherubic son has taken to concealing himself very carefully in random, difficult to discover places. Luckily he hasn’t mastered the art of escape yet, which is very good news for my sanity, but in the meantime I’ve got to periodically sweep the house to uncover his whereabouts.
Last night he was under a barely ruffled comforter, ninja silent and perfectly still as people came in and out of the room around him, barely acknowledging the slight bump in the bedspread that couldn’t possibly be a rambunctious boy.
Last week, while I was hanging some clean laundry in our closet he was playing with his dad’s shoes at my feet. I walked out of the closet to grab some more shirts when I noticed he wasn’t there anymore. I called his name a couple of times, continued with my work then turned off the closet light and walked out in to the living room.
“You guys seen the two year old?” I asked the other kids.
Everyone shrugged, their eyes on the wide-screen, except for my ten-year-old who still had the last hide-and-seek fiasco freshly engraved in her mind.
“Oh no,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I offered. I’d wizened considerably since the last event and knew that the little miscreant was most likely right under my nose.
I went back to the closet and turned on the light. No tiny feet protruded anywhere, no little body was pressed in to a corner.
Hmmm?
We searched the other rooms. The kitchen, the bath, the shower, the cabinets.
Nothing.
I came back to the closet.
“Darling two year old,” I called out, “would you like to eat some chocolate? I have some for you.”
“I here, Mommy.” He trotted out happily from inside our walk-in, at which point I was completely convinced the kid had some type of inter-dimensional travel abilities since five seconds prior that closet had been empty.
But a little while later I discovered his secret…
Of course, the pint-sized villain had returned to the scene of the crime – an aluminum shoe rack – that he’d easily perched upon, keeping his feet conveniently off the floor and his tiny face buried away behind all of Mommy’s draped things.
See that smile. He knows he’s been busted, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before he finds a better more secured hideout.
Coincidentally, he’s recently started saying “I love you, Mom”, a phrase he’d been very skillfully withholding for the entirety of his speaking life.
Trouble comes in compact, exceedingly adorable packages.
At least he can be bought.
There is raw cookie dough..
And small sticky hands…
And an afternoon spent lazing on a sofa…
Now if they could just look that happy all the time, I might be able to retain some semblance of sanity…
The rule. Not the exception. Oh well.
It was one of those mornings.
No, not one of those mornings, but the good kind.
The kind where everyone was off to a good start. Children were shipped off to school with a smile, the sun was blazing in a bright blue sky, birds were chirping (and none of them were swooping in for an attack). Sounds like a myth, doesn’t it? But really, it was lovely.
And a certain two year old was on his best behavior.
I mean, so good that I had to pause for a moment to appreciate the shiny, happy, perfectness of it all. He was cooperative, he was delightful. There was giggling and smiling and an abundance of painfully adorable phrases were shared.
On the way home from drop offs – Mommy, I love house. I hug house. Yeah.
Bouncing on the bed – Mommy, I funny. I jumping. Whee. Catch me.
Choosing a movie to watch together – Mommy, Willy Wonka amazing chocolatier, yeah. Yeah. I watch Willy Wonka. I want squirrel.
Trust me, he was so cute it hurt.
Then he went down for a nap a little later than usual. So late that less than an hour later I had to wake him up so we could go pick up his brother and sister from school. Sometime during that brief sleep, my pleasant pre-schooler was swapped for a growling, rabid monkey wearing his clothing and a diaper.
No words could soothe the monkey.
No food would appease him.
The monkey would not accept tokens of affection.
The monkey would not be comforted through gentle gestures.
The monkey hung around until bedtime, shrieking, whining, crying, and once even hitting his big brother with a plastic baseball bat.
If that monkey had started flinging poo, I would have returned him to whatever zoo he’d escaped from.
The monkey is gone today, but for future reference never EVER wake the monkey if you can help it.
I took the two Motrin right as the first sea lion slithered his way on to the stage. It was the very first show on our itinerary, we’d only been at the park for fifteen minutes, but I’d chaperoned enough field trips to know how the day would play out, especially in the blazing sunshine with 21 barely contained Kindergarteners in our charge.
While my six year old applauded Salty and his Reef Rangers, I was hoping the preemptive ibuprofen dosage would ward off the migraine destined to settle in. Already I’d spent 40 minutes in an un-air-conditioned bus, sharing a narrow bench seat with three small boys, one of whom talked non-stop for the entire ride. Non. Stop.
“My mom lets me watch Snakes on a Plane. I want to be a gangster some day so I can wear my hat sideways. My dad wants me to be a doctor. But I want to be a pizza guy and a mime. I really like pizza and I’m really good at being a mime.”
Insert child pretending to be trapped in a box here.
Did I mention only half of my rear end fit on the seat? The other half dangled precariously in the air as I tried unsuccessfully to procure even a single coveted inch, while Mr. Mouth gabbed at me about nothing in particular.
“I’ve been on an airplane before. I brought my wallet so I could buy a souvenir. My pants don’t have any pockets. My sister be’s mean to me sometimes. Once I couldn’t breathe cause I was sick, I sounded like this…”
Insert child gasping for air and clutching his throat here.
After the sea lions we power walked over to the second show (dolphins) and I could feel that first tinge of a headache muscling its way in. The teacher, who is a sweetheart and coincidentally an organizational nightmare, had decided to skip out on the picnic lunch and just have the kids eat during the dolphin exhibit to save time. 21 five and six year olds, unwrapping their Lunchables and losing said wrappers willy nilly after listening to a shpiel on how garbage pollutes and kills our reefs.
By the time we made it through the bathroom break, the water playground stop, and the killer whale show, my brain was twitching. Veins were throbbing, possibly one of my eye balls had fallen out due to pressure.
The kids had a great time though and I did enjoy my son’s company, even though our one on one time was limited. Every time he willingly grabbed on to my hand and held it as we scurried along, turned my heart in to a warm little puddle right in my chest cavity.
And we were only a little late coming back to school.
Eventually I came home, rested my eyes, and had some coffee, the migraine had receded and all was right with the world.
Except for that mime kid, he worries me a little.
Here are some photos to show it wasn’t all agony.
I ask my son almost as soon as he gets in the car, “so, what did you have for lunch today?”
It doesn’t seem like such an imperative question, except for the fact that up until recently I used to make him lunch every day – a turkey sandwich with American cheese, no crust. Now he takes his chances with the cafeteria fare, one day it’s nachos which he’ll devour, other days it’s a fish sandwich he can’t even stand to look at.
In the rear view mirror I can see him shrug his shoulders. “I had milk.”
Milk?
My darling six year old is a tiny rail of a boy, he tips the scales at a whopping 37 pounds. He needs all the nutrition he can get.
“Why didn’t you eat your food, buddy? Didn’t you like what they were serving?”
He squirms for a moment. “No, it’s just that someone put their fingers in my food. Then I didn’t want to eat it.”
“Someone” is a child we’re all too familiar with. “Someone” thought it was a good idea to count the cheese bread sticks on my son’s tray by physically poking each one.
“Someone” can also be described as a pushy-non-sharing-sand-thrower.
My son on the other hand, is guilty of slightly lesser offenses – overly-sensitive-crying-nose-picker. My two year old is an undressing-toy-tossing-shrieking-furniture-jumper.
I get that they’re little, they’re still learning the ropes, being taught rules that vary greatly from family to family. Obviously “someone’s” parents don’t stress food touching etiquette the way that I do, but then again “someone” probably manages to keep those same probing digits out of her own little nose. It’s all perspective.
When “someone” confesses to her mother that she was prodding my son’s food, her mother blithely responds, “that’s not nice, baby, don’t do that again” as her daughter carelessly skips away. Meanwhile my son’s stomach is digesting its own acids.
Back at home I advise my son not to sit with “someone” at lunch if he can avoid it. He nods as he eats the PB&J I fixed him. Hopefully “someone” won’t be a repeat offender.
I let it slide. Teaching “someone” manners is far outside my scope of motherly privileges. I’ve got my own brood to keep in line. Sadly, I’m just a tongue-biting-crap-talker, but I suppose there are worse things to be. At least I can keep my fingers from digging through my husband’s lasagna. I’m sure he, for one, appreciates that.
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For more on Manners or a lack thereof, visit Sprite’s Keeper’s Spin Cycle. All the cool kids are doing it.
My son despises his clothes.
This is a recent development. On any given day I can be expected to dress and redress him ten to fifteen times in the same outfit I find strewn about the house whenever I’m so careless as to take my eyes off of him.
Tonight, his clothing escape trick didn’t work as well as he planned. He’d been calling for me from the bedroom as I cleaned up the kitchen after dinner. There was screaming involved, possibly tears, but since these reactions often accompany anything from a stubbed toe to a toy box that won’t open, I try not to get unnecessarily worked up.
“If you need me to help you, come here and tell me what’s wrong,” I shouted over the running faucet.
Over trundled my little guy in a frenzied state, wearing his surfboard tee as a tube top.
Of course, my first reaction, being the wonderful, sensitive parent that I am, was to snap a picture of him for later use. Every good story is illustrated isn’t it?
Afterward I tried to pry him out of his shirt to no avail. I really have no idea how this sucker managed to put both arms through this fairly narrow head hole, but I was unable to recreate the maneuver. Instead he had to shimmy his shirt downward over his bottom, effectively removing his shorts in the process…
I’m pretty sure that was his plan all along.
And the nakedness ensued.
