The last couple of weeks have brought us face to face with 2 deaths, a cancer diagnosis and the bittersweet activities of helping friends from our closest inner circle prepare to move to the other side of the country. And, if it weren’t for the fact that people regularly get fired for writing about workplace shenanigans, I’d be able to tell you about things.Things that may finally allow me to check job stress off my list. What I am trying to say here is that if it weren’t for the constant distraction of keeping Stella from trying to stuff her brother in the dryer, I don’t think I’d successfully be able to pull myself out of bed in the morning. Distraction therapy – as opposed to my usual vodka-tonic therapy.
Over the weekend we traveled to the Bay Area so that we could leave the kids with my sister while attending Monday’s funeral. Due to some warm springtime weather, it ended up turning into a mini-vacation for the kids, who got to swim, go to the SF Zoo and play at the neighborhood park which, incidentally, makes even our nicest park look like a weed infested dirt lot with a rusty swingset. I guess when you live in the epi-center of upscale San Francisco suburbia a park isn’t considered a park unless it comes complete with an elaborate water play area and condo-sized play structure.
Click here to witness the reason why Stella routinely asks me why we don’t live closer to our families.
If we were to be graded this year on our ability to prepare and deliver birthday gifts in a timely fashion, we would be receiving a big fat F, as in ‘Frankly, You’re Incompetent’
So guess what, oh lovely Mother-in-Law of mine? Your proxy gift will maybe, hopefully, and with any kind of luck be delivered on your actual birthday. (We salute you, Mr. Overnight Shipping Inventor.) As for your real gift? Umm yeah, on backorder. And as for the sweet little video of Stella singing you Happy Birthday, followed by Porter’s screaming refusal to participate? That would be trapped on the camera because we opted to use the other video camera. The video camera that we just realized does not have the appropriate cabling to fit either one of our computers. See? Incompetent.
Basically, what I am saying here is that your stand-in gift might be arriving on time, and the only video I could retrieve is this one taken a couple of days back with Porter doing his Ramones version of the ABC’s.
Today, you turn two years old. And in this – your second year – we have had much to celebrate. In my best estimation, it was an In Like a Lion, Out Like an Ill-Tempered Housecat kind of year for us. We were finally able to rediscover sleep, sleep, happy sleep, and found ourselves no longer dangling you at arm’s length each time you hiccuped – for fear that we would be drenched in a shower of puke. You had tubes put in to alleviate your “glue ear” and in the last two months you were able to finally push through those nasty two-year molars. Check, check annnnnd check.
And so, with all the physical stuff finding equilibrium, we are left with just the screaming.
But you know what else we are left with? The cute. The talking. The singing. The jumping and the joke telling. And in the last couple of months, it is as though your developmental process ignited its turbo-boosters. I am starting to get a sinking feeling that it won’t be long before you and your sister will no longer be independent units of crazy, but will instead unite and create an impenetrable front of crazy that will be the source of my total undoing.
Your language development is coming at a frightening pace, yet still tends revolve around a growing pool of verb commands – most ending in an exclamation point, or seven. (Wahn To!, Hab It! Do It!), and your father continues to perpetuate this process by speaking to you like a caveman. It is only a matter of time before the two of you are referring to each other as Duuuuude. Which brings up that other thing: You are a boy. As in, not a girl. And although this seems rather obvious and lacking in need of description, it is actually huge. Everyone is quick to point out what they consider to be typical boy behavior, yet I really have had no idea what to expect. And you have not disappointed. You are a total cuddler, my affectionate little creature who would sit on my lap for the better part of a day if I let you. You don’t watch TV – it holds little interest to you, and no matter how much I have begged you to lounge in front of a movie so I can get something done, you are completely disinterested. I have mentioned that car/truck/tractor thing about once or fifty times now, and it truly is the most stereotypical “boy” thing you do. But, it had nothing to do with us, and everything to do with your titanium reinforced will. Distracting you is only useful about half the time, and more recently we have gone back to spelling things so that we don’t inadvertently remind you of that thing we just spent an hour trying to make you forget. Like every time we try to wash your precious blanket. You, my son, have actually stood in front of the washer screaming for the entire duration of a wash cycle.
And Porter, I don’t really know how else to say this except well, in this house, the OCD doesn’t fall far from the tree. You have inherited unmistakable aspects of your dad’s doorknob touching tendencies. You refuse to wear your shirt if it gets wet, clawing and screaming at it, until we remove the garment, as it is obviously eating off your skin. Another gem that has surfaced recently is that because of your 4 new molars, you have become a hydrant of drool, and while sucking your thumb, you’ll realize that your entire forearm is wet with drool. It is at this point that you’ll usually hold up your thumb and say, “Finger wet.” Indicating that we need to dry it off for you. And then I look at your father and make that face that says, “I’m not gonna say it.”
Your relationship with your sister in many ways is exactly the same as it has always been. You love her, because it just wouldn’t ever occur to you that there is any other option – except of course, to be venomously irate at her. In this way, you two have become so very sibling-like. Within seconds of separating you two from a fight where I am certain that one of you is going to lose an ear, I will hear you calling, “Telllllla! Tellllllla!” because the thought of not being right there doing exactly what she is doing is unfathomable to you. You copy her every move, but still become insanely jealous when she is on my lap. It is only recently that I have been able to convince you that you both can sit there at the same time. That is, until I eject you both for fighting.
Although I have spent many a post enumerating all the ways you have fine tuned the art of screaming, I don’t think there is a website big enough to accommodate all of the cute. It is of monumental scale – this cute of yours. I see it every day – in everything you do, when you say peeez and kee-koo (please and thank you), in the way that you say ummmm before answering a question, in your belly laugh, and in your sweet thumb-sucking, blanket carrying self.
Happy Birthday, little man.
Love,
Mom
The setup:
The original version of this joke (as told by your sister): Knock, Knock | Who’s There? | Squirrel. | Squirrel Who? | Squirrel’s looking for you because he thinks you’re nuts!
I have been conspicuously absent lately mainly because it is hard to write with all that screaming. Porter screaming at no one in particular because he wants a hot dog. No, make that oatmeal. No! a hot dog. Nooooo!, oatmeal. NO!!, both. NO!NO!NO!, neither. NO!, a hot dog IN the oatmeal. WHY DID YOU JUST GIVE ME A HOT DOG IN OATMEAL WHEN I CLEARLY WANTED A WAFFLE? Then there is Stella screaming at me for, well, for THE INJUSTICE OF IT ALL! And that over there in the corner? Well, that is me, screaming into my pillow and re-discovering the reason for drinking on weeknights.
There have been so many highs and lows with Stella lately, I could never truly catalog them all. But the recurring theme goes something like this: I ask Stella to do something. She ignores me. I ask again. She continues to ignore me. I huck a shoe at her. Okay, KIDDING! But not really.
Her need to ignore not just my immediate requests, but larger, more emphatic directives like, oh, say, DON’T GO THREE DOORS DOWN TO YOUR FRIENDS HOUSE WITHOUT TELLING ME FIRST. Yeah, ignored that one too. I came out of the bathroom the other day to find her missing – AGAIN. She had bolted across the street, across the intersection to catch up with her friends who were out on a walk. I could hardly see her through the flames shooting from my nostrils.
And so begins the sequence. I do my best to keep it together and not go all Mommy Dearest on her in the presence of other parents, then once I get her home I begin the 5-part lecture series. The one where I begin the long diatribe about L-I-S-T-E-N-I-N-G. I do everything short of thumping her on the forehead with a giant letter L (for listening- get it?)
This, I have realized, is where my inexperience as a mother – coupled with my task-master tendencies – have kept me from finding success with this issue. Firstly, Stella is 4. Try arguing principal issues with a 4-year-old. No actually, don’t. It doesn’t work. In fact, it does quite the opposite, and you find yourself with a 4-year-old saying things like, “Mommy, can we just be done talking about this now?” To which, I usually respond something like, “Yes, if you can tell me what we have just talked about.” This would be an example of mistake #2: expecting a child who cannot listen to a 2-second request to listen (and repeat) a 10 minute conversation. It actually took me a couple of times to figure this one out. I think more and more, the thought of having to sit through another bedroom chat is a far better deterrent than any other punishment I could conjure.
And round and round we go. 1.) Me talking, 2.) her ignoring, 3.) us ultimately coming to an agreement that she will listen better, 4.) repeat steps 1-3 and follow with a strong cocktail.
As for Porter? Well, he’s just a bag of screaming waiting to be opened. Mostly because neither he (nor his sister, for that matter) are all that great at handling disappointment. No, I’m sorry Buddy, we can’t drive to Grandma’s house right now. [screaming]. No Buddy, we can’t go to the park right now. [screaming] I’m sorry Buddy, but your monkey plate is in the dishwasher right now, you’ll have to use another one. [screaming] And then there’s the tractor. Ohhhhh, the tractor. I am guaranteed to get about 30-40 requests every day to play on a tractor, any tractor. We go to Brain and Andrea’s? He finds the riding lawnmower. We go to Sarah & John’s? He finds the riding lawnmower. The boys’ blood, it runs green & yellow and he would step over our cold dead bodies if he thought there was a truck, tractor or car on the other side.
And yet, because parenting is nothing but a persistent rain-cloud of guilt waiting to unleash it’s torrents of regret, I am perpetually blaming myself. Blaming myself for not having more patience, for doing things even though I know they are only making the situation worse (sarcasm, anyone?), for not being able to figure out when to push and when to just back the hell off. Knowing when to just shrug and laugh has been one of my biggest challenges – mostly because it is the least instinctive thing for me to do, yet when I can finally convince myself to do it, it is often the most effective resolution.
I’m thinking you should probably get used to hearing that last paragraph, because over the next 16 or so years, you are going to be hearing it a lot.
