Overheard conversation between T and L:
L: Daddy, let’s play Charades!
T: I can’t right now, L, why don’t you play by yourself?
L: OK!
L draws a card, looks at it secretly. He stands up and pretends to hold a straw and cup.
L: Sluuuuuuuuurrrrrp!
L: Drinking!
L: You’re right!
Delighted smile at getting it right slowly fades as he realizes that guessing at what he himself acted out isn’t such a good game after all. To our dismay, he does not take another turn.
I decided not to buy a sex book for L after all. I realized that it would certainly become his favorite book and I’d be stuck reading about testicles and vaginas more often than I’d care to. So I took him to the library instead. I asked the children’s librarian for a book about sex appropriate for a 3-year-old. I’m going to go ahead and believe that her assumption that I was pregnant was more related to my question than my appearance.
She found a few books for me, full of diagrams, drawings and photos of things that I really didn’t want to talk about. I decided to work my way backwards through one of the books. Starting with the baby, photos of the baby in utero, etc, hoping L would be bored before we got to the actual seed planting bit at the beginning.
Turns out, boredom never happened. BUT he was entirely mesmerized, amazed, aghast and distracted by umbilical cords. We looked at all the books and he only wanted to see the pictures with umbilical cords. I can talk umbilical cords all day, no problem! Does the baby get ice cream through the umbilical cord? Does the baby get carrots through the umbilical cord? Much better than does daddy use a knife to put the seed in your belly?
With L’s curiosity sufficiently satisfied, we left all the books at the library and I have heard not a peep about any of it since. So, if your kids start asking and you’re not up for the conversation, stick with umbilical cords.*
*I do not condone keeping kids in the dark about sex forever. Just for now.
Over dinner tonight:
T: I have a special treat for after dinner.
L: What is it??
T: I’ll give you a hint. It rhymes with upcake.
L: Chocolate? I love chocolate!!
T: No, L. It rhymes with upcake. It’s a kind of cake.
L: Chocolate cake? Sometimes cake is up, and sometimes cake is down. Is it chocolate cake?
I have this idea that I’d like to write a letter to each of my kids on their birthday each year. I wish I started it on L’s first birthday, but better late than never.
Dear S,
You’ve been around for a full year now, and my life is so much better for it! You have such a happy and sweet disposition. You’re my ray of sunshine and you can bring a smile to my face no matter how tired or grumpy I’m feeling.
You are a busy little person these days walking around everywhere, emptying my cupboards, unrolling toilet paper and being generally destructive and mischievous, but you do it so cutely. You squeal with delight and giggle at every opportunity, especially if caught re-emptying all the sippy cups from the cabinet immediately after I’ve collected them from all over the house and put them away. Your giggle might just be the best sound in the world. You are full of wonder and love to explore and go for long walks outside. You also like to eat the marigolds around the garden.
You do have your own opinions and will let it be known if you’ve been crossed. For such a small person, you have a very loud voice. You pretty much hate the car lately and do your best to make me as stressed and distracted as possible every time we drive anywhere. But after screaming for the whole drive, you always greet me with a toothy grin when I come to get you from your carseat. You never hold a grudge.
You adore your big brother and squeal when he enters the room and always laugh at his antics. He likes helping you, taking care of you, and playing with you and doesn’t mean to be too rough. Most of the time. The very best way to soothe you if you’re crying is for L to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle Little ‘Tar” to you. He’s been doing this since you were a tiny newborn and it works every time.
You also adore your daddy. When you see him or even hear his voice you start crying until he comes and picks you up. Anytime I try to take you from him, you cry. (Thanks for that, by the way).
You love to eat and will eat anything put in front of you. The quantity of food you can eat is astounding. Often, you eat more at a meal than any of the rest of us. But you need all that energy for your busy self. And also to hold up your giant head. At your 12 month check-up you measured in the 50th percentile for both height and weight, and 97th percentile for head circumference. The Dr. was impressed that you can walk with those stats.
I couldn’t possibly love you more than I do. You’re cuddly, sweet, funny, cute, happy, independent and so much fun. I’m so happy and lucky you’re my baby and this last year has been so awesome because of you. I can’t wait to see what comes next. Happy first birthday, Baby Girl!
Love,
Mommy
Could it be? Is that a light? At the end of the tunnel? I’m squinting into the metaphorical distance and I think I’m seeing a flicker of something. L is approaching the second half of 3, and lately the ratio of OK times to horrible times has been on the upswing. Even a bit of hilarity in there these last few days.
Maybe it’s new Hammer T, maybe it’s just the age and he’s coming out of one phase and entering a new one. Maybe the demon has been exorcised forever! He’s not behaving so differently all of the time, but it seems like some of the fight is gone. He’ll still snarl and bristle, bare his teeth, but then he’ll often submit rather than going for the jugular.
Last night our weekly babysitter, M, arrived as usual at 6PM. L went from calm and happy to running around the house, shooting at us and being generally obnoxious the second she came through the door. She said “Guess what?” to him excitedly to which he screamed back, ”DON’T TALK TO ME! I DON’T LIKE YOU!” Urg. It continued in this vein until we left the house. As he followed us out the front door, I put my face in his and said in a convincing tone that he’d better start being nice to M, or else. (I have no idea what this “else” was going to be. I can’t believe I even said it. I’m pretty sure this was an ineffective threat I heard a lot as a kid and it just came out.)
Sure that we’d come home to hear about L’s rude behavior, we instead learned that as soon as we got in the car, L turned to M and said, “I don’t mean that I don’t like you. I just don’t want my mommy and daddy to go.” They then happily baked cookies, listened to Dr. Seuss books on CD and he went to bed with no problems.
So, we still have a ways to go. He didn’t exactly behave well, but he retracted his claws, maybe even felt bad for treating M that way and sort of apologized. It’s a small step in the right direction, right? I’m cautiously optimistic. I’ve been burned before.
T is putting the hammer down and I love it. I call him Hammer-T now. He was never really overly permissive with L, he’s just naturally nice and calm – a problem I don’t have, so I’ve been Hammer-Allison forever. But this new, angry, fed-up Hammer-T is just the greatest. One of the things I always loved about T was his innate niceness. It was so foreign to me and a perfect balance to my innate bitchiness. Who could have guessed I’d be so thrilled to see him toss it aside and join me on the dark side?
T is focusing his hammer on any disrespectful behavior of L’s. Any back talk, rude noises or faces, ignoring of requests will be met swiftly by Hammer-T. These things were always met by Hammer-Allison (which, in truth, is just regular Allison), but my hammer has become ineffectual, and compared to T’s it’s a little pink thing with a squeaky voice.
With Hammer-T around, I get to be calm! And Hammer-T doesn’t let anything slide. The slightest rudeness and L gets the Hammer. At first, L didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t listen to a simple request and T came down on him. HARD. L was so confused. A few minutes later when L made a face at me, down came the hammer. I feel very special getting all this bodyguarding by my husband against my 3-year-old.
So, I’m a happy gal with a mean husband and L had better get in line as he now has Mean Mommy and Mean Daddy to contend with. But, with Mean Daddy around, I can play nice every once in a while. Imagine that!
I had this nice idea to pick T up from work, get a pizza and head to the playground to enjoy what might just be the most beautiful evening of the year. The weather was amazing. Not hot. Not cool. Just right. Pizza ordered, drinks, napkins etc packed, T picked up at 5PM on the nose, swing by pizza place and head to the park. Sounds great, right?
We’re not the only ones with this idea. (Well, we may be the laziest. The park was dotted with other families with picnic dinners but no one else carrying in a pizza box.) I noticed all the other families having this lovely time together and I felt great to be among them. This is what having little kids is all about. The park was peaceful, even quiet. We couldn’t hear the other families’ voices from where we sat. Even at the playground, where several kids were playing, the only sounds were a squeaky swing and the lilt of small voices at play. There were no parental voices shouting out commands, threats and directives. Except mine. I’m that loud lady who ruined your picnic.
L was too excited by the playground to even consider the pizza. He ran laps around the whole thing and was up and down off of each climbing structure so many times we couldn’t keep track of him. And, as he passed any other child, he carefully aimed and fired his finger gun in their face while making that fucking annoying shooting sound that seems to be genetically encoded in the y-chromosome.
Loud voice: “L! Stop shooting the other children! There is to be no more shooting!”
I should have been more specific. I needed to actually list all things that there should be none of. Because he did listen and stopped shooting, and instead started throwing Spidey webs in the children’s faces with another annoying y-chromosome sound effect.
“L! Come here please! …. Come.Here.Now.”
He comes and I explain that he is not to do any annoying thing in any child’s face. He is not to make mean faces; he is not to growl; he is not to shoot anything, including, but not limited to, guns and webs. And, if he’s smart, he’ll sit down and eat some pizza because there will be no more food tonight.
He doesn’t sit down but by the time I’m done explaining all of this to him the other parents have corralled their kids to a separate, far away, part of the playground nowhere near the picnic table where we’ve set up camp.
The other things I shouted out during our time in the park include:
“You’re going to go to bed hungry!” (Which elicited some surprised dirty looks from the lovely couple escorting their sweet, somewhere-between-14-and-16-month-old out of the park.)
“Whatever that is, stop putting your hand in it!”
“Stop putting your foot in it too!”
“I mean it about no more food tonight!”
“This pizza is dinner, and if you don’t eat dinner there will be no snack, no dessert, no food at all.”
“That’s not your phone, put it down please!”
“That’s still not your phone!”
You see, I was sitting at the picnic table having dinner. I was not going to run after L at the park in order to tell him these things in a conversational voice. Dinner time is a time to sit and eat and if he chooses not to, it’s his (stupid) decision and he will just miss out on the meal. So, I had to be a little louder than all the polite people in the park with their sweet, polite children.
One day, I want to be one of them. I want to be the one having a really good time with my family. Not just a time where there were some OK moments, maybe a good moment or two, mixed in with a lot of frustration and embarrassment. L can be so sweet and friendly or he can shoot kids in the face, and I really can’t predict which L I’ll get. Will he be fun L, or scary psychopath L?
In the end he never did eat any pizza. He cried the entire way home, and went to bed hungry. Guess who won’t be ruining your picnic again any time soon?
When L was about 1 he began to show a strong preference for his dad. It started with pure excitement when T was around. This was sweet. It evolved, though, to more than that. Instead of simply being overjoyed at T’s presence, he began to be disappointed and dismayed at mine. Each morning I’d go into his room to get him up and he’d start crying and throwing his pacifiers and lovies at me from his crib. When he started talking, the first time he strung a few words together was during one of these fits. He said, “No! No Mommy, Daddy!”
Knife to the heart.
And so began my tumultuous relationship with L. Everyone said that babies go through these phases of preferring one parent over another, but L’s preference has not wavered and he’s now 3.5. (By the way, just about every day since that first sentence, when I go in to get L in the morning he cries, tells me to go away, and says he wants his daddy. Nice.)
Now let’s bring S into the mix. My darling, sweet baby. The baby who has been the teeny apple of my eye for 11 months now. Who required my full-body full-time attention in those early, colicky weeks where I constantly carried, bounced and shushed her. Who I bathe, feed, sing to, care for, soothe and admire. Whose giggles and squeals I deftly extract. Whose preferences I alone know. My baby.
It started innocently enough. As T walks through the door each night to L’s running delight, S began to flap her arms excitedly too. It’s developed to her crying when she hears his voice as he comes through the door until he comes and picks her up. And then to her suicide dives out of my arms and into his if he crosses her line of vision. And, finally, her first word: “Dada.”
I know, I know, “Dada” is easier to say than “Mama”. Fuck that. I say “Mama Mama Mama Mama” to her all day long and all I get in return are coos and dribbly raspberries. Not even the slightest effort or interest. T walks through the door and clear as a bell, “Dada! Dada! Dada!” That bastard gets all the glory.
Meanwhile, I have snot on my shoulder. The left side of every single one of my shirts is all stretched out from the way S pulls at my clothes as she sits on my hip. Half the time my entire left breast is exposed to the world thanks to her tugging at my top. I’m the one who wrestles with her to cut her nails, brush her teeth, get medicine into her, put cream on her eczema, change her diaper etc.
Motherhood is a dirty job. All I ask for is a little “mama”. Maybe some excited arm flapping. Instead I get the moan of discontent which means: “Hey, you, slave-lady, fetch me more Cheerios. NOW!”
Knife.To.The.Heart.
Awhile back, over dinner:
L: “I love you, Daddy.” (Awww, what a sweet kid)
L: “I love you, Mommy.” (Alas, it’s all worthwhile)
L: “I love you, bean,” said to string bean. (%$#@!)
Yesterday someone said the word “stranger” to L. This is a new word for him so he asked what it meant. I figured it might be a good time to introduce the concept of stranger danger, although part of me was loath to do it; I hate to take away his innocence, his awesome and naive view of the world. But I did it.
“A stranger is any person who you don’t know.”
“What if I just ask him his name? Then we’re friends?”
OK, different tack.
“What do you do if we’re out somewhere, like a mall or a fair, and you get lost?”
“I look around and mommy is maybe behind me.”
“I’m not behind you; you can’t find me.”
“Maybe I find Daddy instead.”
OK, different tack.
“If you get lost, and you can’t find mommy and you can’t find daddy, you should try to find another mommy and tell her that you are lost. Pick a lady who is with her kids. She’ll be a nice mommy who can help you.”
“A lady who isn’t with her kids is a bad mommy.”
“Uh, no, sometimes ladies go out without their kids… nevermind that. Just look for another mommy like me.”
“Or a daddy”
“No, not a daddy. Just a mommy.”
“Why?”
Ugh. I hate this. We went on to have a ridiculous conversation covering different places he might get lost. “What if I get lost in a tree?” “You’re not going to get lost in a tree.” “But what if I do?? Or, what if I get lost in a waterfall, or hay?”
I explained that if he can’t find another mommy, that he should go into a store and talk to the person who works there for help. His follow-up questions were so off the wall and off topic, it’s clear he has no idea what I’m talking about. Am I wrong to introduce this to a 3-year-old? Did I go about it the wrong way?
The whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth and a pit in my stomach. How are we to manage letting our sweet (well, in this case anyway), innocent children out there into the world with all the creeps and sickos? Really, it’s too much to bear. How and when did you talk about this stuff with your kids?