Apr
14
Lord, was that ever a tedious weekend. We were visiting family in Oregon for Easter, and there was way too much driving and not nearly enough sunshine. The kids have had the same cold for weeks and can’t stop coughing, JB got sick halfway through the trip, and I think I lost my patience somewhere on the side of I-5.
This is where photos come in handy. Because sometimes pictures are a lot better than the boring, complain-y story that accompanies them.
In other news, Dylan has completely changed his eating habits, in that he used to eat and now he does not. Seriously, he used to devour anything and everything and now I swear to god he is living on graham crackers and milk. And you know how people say, oh, don’t worry about it, he’ll eat when he gets hungry? Well, that’s bullshit. Because here’s what happens when a child doesn’t eat enough: they get cranky and upset and eventually apoplectic with rage because they feel like hell and they DON’T KNOW WHY. In the meantime, you’re trying to get food in their system but they’re all pissed off and wailing and flinging their hands around and eventually you have to TRICK them by employing some bizarre form of peekaboo/here-comes-the-spoon-plane! game in the effort to get one single solitary fucking calorie in their scream-holes so they’ll calm down for the love of GOD.
Mealtimes have become a colossal pain in the ass and half the time I just spread random snack items around on accessible surfaces for him to hopefully grab while he’s bustling by on his way to find some pointy object to poke in his eye and if you’re wondering why there’s a piece of string cheese stuck to your ass it’s because every chair in my house now has food on it THAT’S WHY.
Also, as long as I’m ranting, here are some more bullshit sayings everyone needs to put a moratorium on:
Nap when the baby is napping. Yeah, because it’s so RESTFUL to try and fall asleep when you have no idea if you’ll be woken up in five minutes or two hours. See also: being woken up out of a drooling coma after five minutes, murderous feelings caused by.
Just wait until they’re teenagers. Okay, I get it, teenagers suck, but why does everyone say this? Maybe MY kids will be awesome teenagers. I mean, probably they won’t, but don’t go crapping in my future Wheaties just to share the misery, dammit.
I stay in shape by chasing my kids! Shut the fuck up, Hollywood. Unless you’re chasing your kids at a dead run around a track for 30 minutes a day five days a week I’m guessing that 8% body fat figure of yours has more to do with the no-carb diet and personal Pilates trainer.
This too shall pass. So will that spicy chicken burrito I ate last night, but it doesn’t mean it’s going to be pleasant.
What are your least favorite parenting platitudes?
Apr
8
A few years ago when Riley was still a very small baby we visited some friends who had an older child, maybe a year or eighteen months old, and I remember looking at what appeared to be a giant infant hefted in the mother’s arms and thinking, I hope Riley doesn’t look like THAT when he gets bigger. Like some kind of weird MONSTER BABY, all enormous and able to walk but still, like, slobbering and not talking and stuff. UNNATURAL.
Of course that’s exactly what happened to him and I didn’t think he looked weird at all, he was adorable. Aw, who’s a little man? WHO IS? YOU are! Etc.
Now Dylan’s in the Monster Baby stage and I happen to think he’s pretty cute too, but I’m leaning back toward my original stance that this age is completely unnatural. It’s just not right that a child can be so large and mobile but still practically a fetus. In my opinion, children should remain small mostly unmoving blobs until they reach a more stable state of cognitive development, because this business of being able to RUN AROUND with a brain primarily formed of suicidal Silly Putty is ridiculous.
For instance, I cannot keep Dylan from eating random pieces of filth off the floor. No matter how much I vacuum, he toddles around scanning the floor like the Terminator in order to locate the one solitary pine needle I missed and in the time it takes me to lunge at him yelling Nooooooooooooooo he gets it crammed in his mouth and begins the process of choking on it.
“Kaaaaack,” he says, his face awash in total dismay, “Kaaack! Kaaaaaack!” I sweep it off his tongue, we both take a breather, maybe weep a little bit—then he’s off to find . . . ANOTHER FUCKING PINE NEEDLE.
It’s also stupidly frustrating to me that I can’t talk with Dylan. I mean, it’s not like I think he should be capable of carrying out conversations at 14 months old, it’s just that it’s hard for me to switch gears all day long between one child who can explain he’s feeling sad because his blanket is in the laundry and another whose eardrum-shattering screams must be analyzed and a best guess hazarded. It’s not much different from dealing with a baby—”Are you hungry? Tired? Bored? WHAT OMG WHAT IS IT”—but, you know, it IS, if only because a toddler can make so much more noise when they’re pissed off. Plus, they can follow you around the house, howling like tiny wolves.
I feel like this is one of the hardest ages in terms of connecting with my own child. He’s unpredictable; he’s filled with fleeting, terrifying rages; he requires so much intervention it sometimes feels like all I do is make him upset as I pry him away from various unwanted activities. I often feel at a total loss for how to communicate with him, like I’m trying to talk to someone behind a thick wall of glass. Hello, hello? Am I getting through, here? No way to know. I get kisses one minute, wild kicks the next. He loves me, he loves me not.
Still, there is nothing like a young child experiencing everything for the first time. The sweet shock of smelling a richly-scented flower, the startled joy of seeing a bird at the feeder. To be with him right now is to have a chance to see the world through fresh eyes, and even Riley—hurtling through life at breakneck speed—often slows down to join his brother. We all stop for a moment to marvel at a soap bubble, point at a trundling beetle, smile at the descending bounces of a rubber ball on a wooden floor.
(Oh, and don’t forget the PINE NEEDLES. Those things are FASCINATING.)
The Monster Baby stage is difficult for sure, but for all the bad moments, the good ones are like sunshine. I will never stop being amazed at how parenthood swings on and on and on, highs and lows, a new view every day, everything balancing out in ways words can’t even explain.
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