I got a new assignment
It’s for the magazine to which I will not cop. The one that from here on out I will refer to as “Breasts are Fun!” It’s ghost-writing and I’ve never done that before. I guess it’s like pleasing an editor only you also have to please the person you’re ghosting? I don’t know but I should have some coffee and work on that a bit.
Our house is looking lovely and I think we’ll be more than ready to hit the (stagnant) market on Monday. At least it will be nice to live in while we wait to sell it. We’re going to take our realtor’s advice and put in an offer on the house we liked contingent on selling this one but I think that all sounds very iffy. He says it will give us a better chance at getting the house just because a house “in contract” gets less looks. I hope they’ll take the offer.
Let’s see, what else? No new news from my friend in crisis. Hopefully this means that her main support system kicked in. I still jump when the phone rings though.
Umm, how are the kids, you ask? Pretty good. Noah is wearing an orange half-mask for some reason. And a cape. He keeps running into walls and talking to himself. He appears to be having fun.
Madison has a new thing she’s doing. Let’s say she’s sitting in my lap and smacks me.
“No hit,” I say sternly and then put her off my lap. And when I say put I mean that I gently but firmly stand her on her feet. She then throws herself to the side, dramatically falling either onto the floor or towards a piece of furniture. Then she turns to me, glaring. “Boo-boo,” she announces, pointing to her left thigh. (Always the left one.) The implication is, I believe, “You cruel, cruel woman; see how you’ve broken my gentle little toddler heart and then shoved me into things.”
I am so not falling for it but it does make me laugh.
I’ve been thinking about when Noah was a toddler, particularly this terrible stage he went through because I hear girls hit it earlier.
When he was 2.5 he started blaming me for all of his troubles. It was the developmental point when he realized that 1) I was not the Queen-Boss of the world and 2) but I was Queen-Boss of him. He both wanted absolute freedom but he still wanted me to tie his shoes for him. Everything I did was wrong. (I’m sure those of you who are parents of toddler/preschoolers or former toddler/preschoolers will remember this stage.) He would ask for cereal and I would get it for him but once presented with his usual bowl of cheerios in milk he would scream that:
–He didn’t like cheerios;
–And if he did, then he didn’t like them with milk;
–And if he did like them with milk, then he didn’t like them in that particular bowl;
–And if he did like them with that particular bowl, then he would want a different spoon;
–And if he did get a different spoon, then he would want them served elsewhere;
–And if they were served elsewhere, had he mentioned that he didn’t like cheerios?
Everything was a battle. If I let him do it himself, he was furious that I wasn’t helping (he hated feeling incompetent even then). If I helped him, he was enraged that I wouldn’t leave him alone. It was lose-lose for me all of the time and I was absolutely baffled about what to do with him.
A woman I know calls this the “bent banana” stage because no matter what you offer the child, it’s not quite right. Perhaps he wanted his banana to have less of a curve or be peeled differently or to have a more subtle pattern of brown spots. That’s if brown spots are acceptable because for many toddlers brown spots are an anathema to their very souls. So get this? You are all-powerful so get rid of brown spots! Now! And don’t lie to me that you can’t do that — you can do that! Aren’t you the person who has fed the child before he himself knew he was hungry? Who made the wet diapers disappear and new, more comfortable dry ones appear? Oh the betrayal! All this time you were a mere human with no control over brown banana spots! Let the wailing begin!
It’s just a very hard fall from grace, let me tell you.
Anyway, during this stage Noah had a long rubber snake and he named that snake Meaner. Meaner used to whip me. Noah didn’t do this, mind you; it was Meaner. I’d be making the doomed cheerios and Meaner would suddenly lash out of Noah’s hand and whip around my legs.
“Noah!” I’d bark.
“It was Meaner,” he would say innocently. “He’s mean.”
Up Meaner would go on top of the ‘fridge, tantruming would commence. It wouldn’t even be 9am yet and already we would be on our second or third battle. (The first being how I came down the stairs. Did I go down first? He wanted to go down first! Did I go down behind him? He wanted me to carry him!)
It really threw me with Noah because he’d been a pretty easy baby. Clingy, yes, but as a new mom I really loved being needed. He was a good listener, never put small things in his mouth, and rarely couldn’t be comforted out of a cry. When he turned 2.5, it was like the fairies had come and stolen my child. I figured I’d broken him and was now stuck with this hellion.
I was very unhappy about it.
But this is what I’ve learned since then:
1. It’s pretty hard to break a kid.
2. Separating from your parent is a really hard thing to do. (Only thing harder is separating from your kid.)
3. This too shall pass.
I won’t worry in the same way with Madison and I won’t be as emotionally tied up in her feelings about me. With Noah I can now see his pattern. He spends two weeks leading up to some insane behavior, two weeks absolutely enmeshed in it, then two weeks coming down. His terrible behavior always peaks just as I’m thinking that we need to take serious action.
I’m not sure what Madison’s pattern will be but I do know that the sunny, determined, quick-to-anger, quick-to-joy personality is who she is and who she will be. Noah is still the serious but humorous, affectionate and sensitive person he was early on. He still has some Meaner in him but he no longer carries around a snake. And my gosh, does he love that story.
“Really?” he says, marveling at his terrible toddler self. “I whipped you? And then I lied about it?”
I think he both admires and is horrified by his own chutzpah.
During this stage Mallory used to yell from her bed “I’m awake!” We would go in to get her, and no matter which one of us showed up, she wanted the other one. She would yell “Not you!” The only way she could be comforted is if the other person came.We were idiots and played this game. First time parents. We used to race to see who got in there first, because after the princess’ dismissal, you could go back to bed.
What you asked me to point out before? This is what I mean!
They do it again when they hit puberty, only without the snake. Only they do things like lie to you and then go to Venice Beach and hang out with drifter ‘crust punks’ and homeless people and drink a bottle of Bacardi and then you go to pick them up in a pool of their own vomit in an alley in Venice and when you ground them for life and restrict their activities they get peevish and when you inform them that you no longer trust them to be either sensible or truthful, they are somehow surprised and INSULTED by this. And then you have a housebound, sulking, insulted, peevish person who is like a dark cloud at you all summer long.
Er. What I mean to say is, hey, no, it totally passes and your child hasn’t been stolen by fairies. It will get better.
I wrote a newspaper column not long ago about my daughter and the changelings. The Stolen Child has always been one of my favourite poems, and then I end up with a faery-child myself.
omgosh, you just described my 4 yo! ben must always win and things must be just so. but he is sooo loving and always gives the best kisses. kari, who is almost 2, just has an attitude about everything…instead of hitting, she bites me on the shoulder then sticks out her lip and says “mommy stupid” or “micki stupid” when i put her down. gotta love older siblings who teach her words *ugh* ya know, i think the whole reason they are still so sweet when they are sleeping is to wipe away all memories of them being little monkeys during the day
I’m with Noah, I love the Meaner story too. That is pretty freakin’ clever and funny.