Two years ago today you completed us.
Two months you waited until you decided to grow.
Two sparkly blue eyes which are flecked with gold.
Two dimpled hands that hold my cheeks as you kiss my nose.
Two chubby legs that carry you away from me. And bring you back. For now.
Two syllables to say my name. “Ma. Ma.”
Two tragic minutes in time-out when you hit.
Two older brothers to get you into trouble and maybe even get you out of it.
Two parents, one of whom gave you blonde hair and the other who made it curly. Who love you. To the moon. To the sun. And back. And again.
Two.
You are perfectly two.
I’ve been out of the workforce for a few years. I have a college degree or two and have some strong experience in my field. But if I were to try to piece together a marketable resume today, I’d be in trouble. Because “2004-Present: Butt-wiper” isn’t going to get me too many interviews.
I’m going to start calling myself a Human Waste Manager. Or maybe a Waste Behavior Specialist. Because dealing with toilet-training issues takes up a good portion of my day, and I may as well adopt a title that reflects that.
Take yesterday evening, for instance. Poor little Evan was having a great time playing outside. Such a great time, as a matter of fact, that he forgot to come inside to go to the bathroom. He made a valiant last-minute dash, but alas… was too late. I heard a heart-rending cry of disappointment from the garage, and raced to find a puddle on the floor and a devastated little boy with soggy shorts. I went into crisis-management mode, trying to simultaneously comfort Evan, make sure he didn’t track pee into the house, and barricade the puddle so that nobody else ran into the garage and slipped in the mess. (Such a talent may or may not translate well into the workplace.)
He showered (an adventure in itself), and we decided to bathe Caleb while we were at it. I stripped him down and the little punk, who is a few days shy of 20 months old, waddled over to the toilet, lifted the seat, and did his best to imitate his big brothers. He made it abundantly clear that he wanted to use the toilet. My heart sank.
I hate potty-training. Hate it. It is the hardest parental task I have ever undertaken. I would have a million Sex Talks with my kids, would breastfeed indefinitely, would change diapers for the next 25 years… all before I would willingly undertake this last potty-training.
But I can’t really justify not potty-training the poor kid so we got out Caleb’s brand-new potty chair. (In our home, each child gets his own new potty chair. Because after teaching a little boy directional pee control, those chairs qualify as weapons of mass destruction and really should be incinerated so as not to pose a genuine threat to public health and national security.) He sat on it for a while and looked cute and then Jeff plopped him in the tub. Where Caleb immediately peed. Of course. (He probably drank a fair amount of contaminated bath water, too, but I left Jeff in charge and didn’t witness it.)
To summarize: Evan, who is potty-trained, peed all over the garage. Caleb, who is not potty-trained, seems like maybe he wants to be. It took a good 45 minutes to deal with the implications of their bathroom adventures last night. I perform some variation on this waste control at least a couple of times a day (don’t forget last week’s Case of the Mysterious Footprints), and probably will for several more years. Several more years of making sure all the pee and poop winds up in the correct place. Several more years of cleaning up all the stuff that doesn’t make it into the right place. Several more years of decontaminating the biohazardous bathroom where all their pee-related crimes against humanity occur. (I just threw up a little in my mouth.)
Along with being a master of preschool arts and crafts and my so-so (but improving) Guitar Hero skills, this is what I have to recommend me for a job. It seems a little underwhelming. Something tells me I’m better off just staying unemployed.
“Mo-ommm! Caleb pooped!” Jensen hollered from the other room.
Of course. It all came clear. The trail of little brown footprints I had just discovered across the living room carpet made total sense. Total disgusting sense. I thought they were a little far apart. Caleb must have been taking really big steps. Triple-jumping or something. Whatever. There was a diaper to change and I needed to get him before he walked on every square inch of floor in the house.
I prepared myself for a leaky diaper, and was confused when I found no leak. No dirty feet. Nothing. The diaper was completely intact. Something was wrong.
Enter Evan. Shocking, isn’t it?
Evan (crying dramatically): “There’s poop on my feet!!!”
Me (surprisingly unimpressed): “Of course there is. Why do you have poop on your feet?”
Evan (wailing): “It’s Caleb’s!!! Caleb’s poop is on my feet!”
Me: “How did you get Caleb’s poop on your feet?”
Evan: “I don’t know!”
Me: “Did you touch him?”
Evan: “Noooo!”
Me: “Did he touch you?
Evan: “Noooo!”
Me: “Quit jumping around. So you got Caleb’s poop on your feet and you have no idea how?”
Evan: “I think it was magic.”
And that was it. That is all I know about how how this happened. So we washed his feet. I scrubbed approximately 6327 poop-prints from the carpet. And the mystery remains. The only bright spot is my hope that Caleb’s Magical Poop will make potty training easier.
Interestingly, even in the midst of my personal drama, my kids just keep on keepin’ on. They are kids. They are boys. There are three of them. I am their mother. And, despite my deepest darkest fears, none of that has changed in the last two weeks.
In that light, I wrote a list. Cause toddlers really don’t care if my legs are shaky. Enjoy.
Ten Things Which Are Hazardous to A Toddler’s Health*
- Steak knives. Especially when held in a death grip by the blade. Even more so when running.
- Dirty diapers
- Dishwasher detergent
- Kitchen chairs. Most dangerous after one has learned to climb upon them and stand upright, but has not yet learned to control the effects of gravity.
- Ktichen table. See #4.
- Tile floor. See #4 and #5.
- Blender
- Magic markers. This is one is not as obvious as some of the others. But said markers become dangerous when one’s father discovers that one has scribbled all over the wall with one, particularly a red one.
- Electrical outlets
- Any possession prized by one’s older brothers. Caution: this one is especially lethal.
_____________
*But with which, interestingly, my own personal toddler has attempted to cause himself bodily harm in the past seven days.**
**Please do not remove him from my custody.***
***Note: I have not included “staples” on this list. This indicates that I am learning. The lack of staples in his possession is not, however, due to lack of effort on his part. This indicates that he is not learning. This is why I am the parent.
Caleb foraging for dinner. Apparently I should have included "trash can" somewhere on this list.
Yesterday was like Monday, except it was Tuesday.
To put it all in perspective, my Monday was especially heinous because Jeff had to go back to work after a week of vacation. And then, because it was just a Bad Day that felt like Monday, I had another Monday the very next day. That meant I had two double-plus-sucky Mondays in a row. Sometimes life isn’t fair.
But, back to yesterday. The Monday-that-was-really-Tuesday. By 5:00 (in the evening) I still hadn’t brushed my teeth. If, by the way, you’re a stay-at-home-parent who doesn’t sometimes not brush his or her teeth, do not feel obligated to tell me this in the comments because I already feel like enough of a loser. Anyway. No toothbrushing. Partially due to lack of opportunity, and largely due to bad attitude.
But at five, I got religion and decided to brush. Sadly, though, my 17-month-old is obsessed with toothbrushes and snagged mine before I could stop him. This is the same kid who has had bright green mucous oozing from every orifice and a rattling cough for about 12 days now. This is the kid who, while playing with his blocks yesterday, had an 11-inch string of snot hanging from his nose to the floor. This is the same kid who sneezed up some alarming ectoplasm all over his afternoon snack an hour earlier.
So my snotty kid grabbed my toothbrush and promptly stuck it in his mouth and I could not wrestle it away from him. He had a pretty serious relationship with that thing. By the time I got it away from him, it was dripping and I didn’t have another toothbrush so I just shrugged my shoulders and ran it under some hot water and brushed away. Gross, yes, but it seemed like the lesser of two evils and actually fit the rest of my day pretty well.
But then. Then the day turned around entirely. Jeff came home from work early.
This meant I did not have to scrape together a scrumptious dinner of leftovers for three starving boys by myself. This meant I did not have to wrestle all of them to a Cub Scout meeting alone. This meant I did not have to dig deep and find the stamina to get them all clean and into bed without a partner.
And, mostly, this meant that I got to watch Jeff’s face when I told him that right after our oozing and coughing son molested my toothbrush, he grabbed Jeff’s and did the exact same thing to it. That his tootbrush actually had mucous hanging from it. His reaction was predictably priceless.
My petty misery? Yes, she loves company.
“Nah! Mah!” Caleb yelled this morning. No more. To demonstrate his displeasure with breakfast, he threw his plate on the floor. Eggs everywhere. Because he’s on a fruit-only diet, apparently. Eggs aren’t fruit.
“Nahnahnahnah!” he screamed as I pinned him down to change his dirty diaper. No no no no. And let me tell you, when a kid only eats fruit, dirty diapers occur with alarming frequency.
“Ah dah!” he bellowed. All done. I foolishly thought that maybe I could vacuum. He stood in front of me and pulled on my legs and let me know in no uncertain terms that I was not to vacuum.
“Nah! Puh!!!” he demanded. No! Up! I had dared put him down for as long as it would take me to move laundry from the washer to the dryer. He jumped at me until I complied.
And so it went, all morning. It’s about control, right? That’s the conventional wisdom about toddlers being negative. They’re trying to control a given situation, trying to use words to influence others. Seems reasonable.
The kids were hungry at lunchtime today, and whiney. I had finally managed to get food to everyone and was working on my own lunch, and I was also hungry and whiney and frustrated and not at all sure that I would survive until naptime. Then Evan started to ask for something. “Mom, can I have…?”
“No!” I said. It had been a long morning. I had gotten pretty much nothing accomplished.
“But I want…” Evan tried again.
“No! Can I please just do something I want to do?” I said. Childishly. Almost toddler-like.
And I wonder who has the control issues.
April 15, 2033
Dear Caleb’s Therapist,
I understand that my son is under your care. He told his father (because he just never seems to have time to talk to me) that he needs to “figure things out.” I’ve always encouraged my children to be in touch with their emotions, and I’m glad he is looking to you for help. As a matter of fact, I might have some information that will assist you as you explore my son’s mind and ponder what might have caused him to seek your services.
He also told his father that he recently mentioned to you the experience of his first haircut. I was so hoping this wouldn’t come up. But since it has, I should probably tell you what I know. I am not proud.
So, yes. He recalls correctly. His first haircut was, indeed, 24 years ago today. And, yes, I had actively made the choice to let his hair grow completely without regard to the practicality of combing it. He screamed whenever I approached him with a comb. So the back of his hair (which was very curly) maybe grew into a single, large, blond dreadlock. And, yes, he looked ever-so-slightly homeless. I take accountability for these questionable parenting choices.
And, yes, we did eat lunch at a Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwich Shop before the fateful haircut. And, perhaps, I did get a little emotional as I looked at Baby Caleb’s wispy, matted hair. Maybe (but I’m a little fuzzy on this) I cried a bit. There is actually an outside chance that I started sobbing audibly over a Number Four with Avocado. It seems like I may have sniffled, “But I want him to stay a baby forever!” as I blew my snotty nose on a napkin. And it’s probably just a figment of an inaccurate memory, but the college kids making sandwiches behind the counter may have been casting subtle freaked-out looks my way and my husband maybe looked at them and shrugged his shoulders. I held it together very well at the hair salon, though, and managed to bring home an envelope full of every single angel hair the nice lady brutally severed from his delicate head.
Since I have your attention for a moment, I’d like to mention a couple of other things that you could maybe bring up with my son. Perhaps you could ask him why he hasn’t gotten his hair cut in six years and why he stopped allowing me to hug him in public shortly after his second birthday. And the sippy cup. I’m sure he’ll bring that up, and I don’t understand why it’s such a big deal. I mean, I let him quit using it when he started junior high. (Oh! that was such a big year. That was the same year I let him stop using a car seat and quit cutting his hot dogs up into little pieces so he didn’t choke. It was risky, but he did fine.) But he seems to throw that in my face as if I did something wrong.
And could you ask him why he had that awful outburst on his 19th birthday, when he introduced us to his nice little girlfriend, and I innocently called him “Sweet Baby Poopsikins” and wiped the cake off his chin with a napkin I had spit upon, and then asked him if he had to go potty. (I wonder what ever happened to that girl, anyway? She seemed nice.)
And, you know, I really don’t think that restraining order was necessary. I was just stopping by a few times a day to make sure he was keeping up on his laundry and hadn’t run out of wheat germ, and checking his messages to make sure he was hanging out with the right kind of friends. And now he won’t even let me call him at work.
Please let me know if you need further information from me. And, if you have a minute, I’d really appreciate it if you would give me his unlisted telephone number.
Sincerely,
Caleb’s Smothering Loving Mother
PS– Maybe you can help me a little. My doctor has mentioned that he wants me to take a few different kinds of medications. Something to “relax” me and maybe something to help me stop crying all the time. I don’t think it’s at all necessary, do you?
The worst first haircut photo ever?
