When your kid looks nothing like you…

When your kid looks nothing like you, people will waste a lot of air telling you that he looks like an exact copy of his father. They will gently reassure you that your kid will look like you eventually, a little bit. But when your kid looks nothing like you and he throws a massive tantrum in the park and you have to drag him away from the playground kicking and screaming, they just assume you’re a kidnapper.

My hair is straight and black-brown. His is curly and blonde. My eyes are black-brown. His are blue. I have olive skin, he is as pink and white as a little girl’s bedroom. He smiles, I don’t smile.   My son looks so different than me that some friends have mockingly suggested husband must have cheated on me. The only things we have in common are big feet, eczema, and easily hurt feelings.

Back to the kidnapping. Someone followed me. A concerned mom “discreetly” trailed me as I hauled my little prize fighter clawing and kicking away from the park the other day. The other parents at the playground merely exchanged long, worried glances at each other but this lady just had to be sure. I could be offended, but instead I’m just amused. Perhaps she convinced herself that he was adopted.

If my son ever figures out how to use our lack of shared visage against me I am very concerned that I’ll end up being thrown in jail by mistake.

We both like fabulous eyewear

Toddler lesson of the day: never bring a toddler to your doctor’s appointment

I only have a few short minutes to write before Captain Destruction wakes up, but after an eventful morning at the doctor’s office I thought it would be helpful to other Reluctant Matrons out there to share some new lessons I learned today.

Lesson 1 – Don’t schedule your doctor visit before lunch and/or nap time (unless you want to physically drag your small progeny by the hands out of the elevator, sing stupid kid songs in the office lobby, and stuff crackers into his little mouth in order to keep him quiet).  Those toys your brought with you to keep him busy will never be as interesting as toddler-accessible water cooler in the corner.

Lesson 2 – Kid food that comes in squeeze pouches are the work of Satan. Has anyone EVER seen a kid who can resist the temptation to squeeze it as hard as possible, unleashing brightly colored geyser of sticky-yet-bland goo all over his hair and clothes?

Lesson 3 – Don’t keep tampons in your purse. It seems practical, but a wrapped tampon is more interesting to a toddler than Dora the Explorer, an iPad, and a new puppy all covered in chocolate. When my head was turned Small Boy fished in my purse with his plump little fingers, grabbed a tampon, unwrapped it, and flung it into the lobby. This bring me to my conclusion, and to …

Lesson 4 – Don’t bring a toddler into a doctor’s office, ever, unless the appointment is for them.

Toddler lesson of the day: toddlers NEVER sleep in!

Except when they do. Right now Small Boy is asleep at 9:45 a.m. He is still alive and breathing, and doesn’t have a fever (Huzzybee and I both checked), he’s just sleeping in…on a Tuesday…which means that I got to sleep in on a Tuesday! This much needed gift from the Universe came just as I was beginning to despair. Small Boy hasn’t taken a nap for two days in a row, wasn’t falling asleep until an hour after his bed time and was waking up at 6 in the morning. While he careened around the house, tearing books from shelves, cans from the pantry, curtains from the window, etc I shuffled after him, cleaning up the carnage under my own little gray raincloud.  I’ve been fantasizing about him pouring himself a bowl of cereal and settling down to watch cartoons on his own. Someday that beautiful dream will come true, if we ever ate cereal, and if we had a functioning TV that could receive a signal.  We have none of these things.

With my few precious moments of free and quiet time I am making lists of things that I need to do today and drinking strong coffee.  Jean-Baptiste, my long-suffering and cowardly tabby cat is purring with pure joy because, for now, HE gets to be “the baby”.  And I am writing to you, Reluctant Matrons, because you probably know how rare it is that a toddler sleeps in on a Tuesday.  May you also be blessed with unexpected small gifts like this from time to time!

Things I learned this week from my 1-year old

This week Small Boy taught me many things and I taught him a few things. I taught him how to point to the picture of a cat in his “Baby’s First 110 Words” picture book. He taught me how to quickly finger sweep a toddlers mouth and remove the fistful of playground sand that he shoved inside just seconds earlier.

I taught him how to squat down and pick up an object without falling over. He taught me that stepping on a piece of cold, cooked zucchini that had been surreptitiously deposited on the kitchen floor feels remarkably similar to stepping on a garden slug.

He also taught me that when I don’t allow him to chew on the hair brush or pull beer bottles out of the recycle bin and smash them against the tile floor I will be punished with screams of fury, beating the floor with his fists, and generalized tantrum throwing.

This week I also learned that Daddy is now his favorite person, followed up by his two sets of grandparents and his Uncle Jabba.  On the favorite person scale I fall somewhere just above the pediatrician wielding his tongue depressor and vaccine syringes, and the man who drives the loud scary motorcycle past our house.

With his newly discovered ability to walk (he started walking last weekend) has come a toddler sense of entitlement and independence.  He no longer has any interest in going down the stairs on his hands and knees facing backwards (the safe way).  He must go down the stairs like a drunk adult – putting one foot out, misjudging the distance, and falling down the remaining steps.  He no longer wants to take baths to throw water all over the floor, he must take showers so he can stand up while he throws water all over the floor.  Since he figured out how to remove his shoes on his own he suddenly finds them unacceptable.

“This is the beginning of the end,” my neighbor told me, and she is correct.  This last week of living with a walking child has left me more exhausted then when I was a sleep-deprived new mom of a 1-month old.  Now is when things will really start to get interesting…

 

The littlest drama king

Last night as we were clearing up from a spontaneous neighborhood BBQ, I suddenly heard screams coming from Søren’s room.  I walked in and saw that his leg was stuck at an awkward angle through the bars of his crib.  He was wedged up to his thigh and his body was contorted on the mattress, face red, tears  soaking the bed.  I tried to pull his leg back through the bars but his plump little knee woulnd’t fit.  I rotated his body so he wasn’t at such a knee-dislocating angle and started calling for help.  Søren screamed louder.  Huzzybee ran in and the two of us extracated him from the crib while our BBQ guests waited, wide-eyed in the kitchen.

Fifteen minutes later, soothed with some time in the rocking chair and a good book, we tucked him back in to bed (after tightening and readjusting his baby bumper), shut off the light and continued to clean up.  Fifteen minutes after that I again heard cries coming from his room.  He was stuck between the bars again, but this time it was just his foot.  I disentangled him, sang him a song, tucked him back in, and turned off the light.

A half an hour later his foot was caught again and I glimpsed a sly smile on his lips as I picked him up.   And then it occurred to me that the last two times hadn’t been accidents at all – he’d been playing me like a ten-pound bag of quarters in a cheap Vegas casino.  After putting him to bed he would wait a few minutes, lay on his back in a comfortable position, daintily slip a pudgy foot between the bars of his crib, take a deep breath and start wailing.

I’m not scared of much – spiders, earthquakes, and now toddlers.  Manipulative, ill-mannered, lacking in personal hygiene and basic social graces, toddlers are adorable little dictators whose sole occupation is finding how to get into trouble…and then getting into trouble.  They have hours of free time to think about ways to thwart their parents and injure themselves.  I think I can handle the injuries, but because I’m a pretty trusting person I can’t handle the thwarting.

Thinking about all of this is making grey hair spring from my scalp and digging deep wrinkles under my eyes.