Having a two-year-old is an experiment in staying sane, everyday. I get up in the morning sometimes and say to myself, maybe this is the day I will hear the word “why” for the gabillionth time and I will strip off my clothes and run down the street naked, yelling, “Woo, woo-hoo!” like one of those old Daffy Duck cartoons.
Maybe my brain will fry and I will leave her at the park or the grocery store. I will come home and suspect something’s missing, and will put a pot of something gloppy on the stove to reduce for hours, and that’s how the police will find me, talking to myself and wondering about all the glop-stains on the wall.
Me and my mama-friends talk about this stuff, the potential for insanity. We talk about little rooms with locking doors (for us or them), tropical vacations, and the possibility of our husbands correcting the things about themselves that really irk us (about the same as us correcting our bad habits, I guess).
And you’ve got your perfect-parenting books, magazines, and even Dr. Phil telling to praise the hell out of your little Morticia or Demonicus. So you get insanity from outside the house, as well as from the inside.
Some days I find myself saying things like, “Thanks for taking the crayon out of the cat’s butt! Good job!” or, “I am very proud of the way you stopped poking your friend in the eye.” Just so I can do something besides scold.
The other morning I realized that the positive-reinforcement thing is going a little too far.
I was so nutsy by 9:30 from being cooped up that I did a quick deck-swabbing instead of a full shower.
“We’re getting out of here, Frannie!” I said, as she stood under me and watched. She watches my every move, it’s like being someone’s personal movie, except the movie can potentially scar them for the rest of their lives.
“Why?” she said.
“Cause Mama’s going crazy. And don’t say ‘why’ again, please. Just because.”
“You washing your face Mama?”
“Yes.” I moved on to other parts.
“You washing your wulva, Mama?”
“Yes, I am.”
“That’s wonderful, Mama. Good job washing your wulva.”
Oh I will be sad when she can say her “v’s”.
priceless.
years ago (good lord like a lifetime ago) i used to be a lifeguard. we had a kid named greg who used to visit the pool. he was four. used to float around the pool underneath me with those little lellow inflatable arm bands . looked like a little blond duck. anyway, i called down to him one day and said “what’s your name?”
“Gweg.” he says
“Gweg?” i reply.
“No…Ga-weg” he responds with careful emphasis.
i almost fell out of the chair.
My kids are 12 and 13, but I remember the early days of motherdom. It has been proven that sleep deprivation can cause brief psychotic episodes. I’m convinced this aggravates the craviness of parenting wee ones. I told my kids one day that I had changed my name and it wasn’t mommy anymore so they couldn’t call me that and I wouldn’t tell them my new name. This worked for about an hour.
Oh man that’s funny. That little one pulls out something new and hilarious every day.
DD: Oooh, you’re good!
Yeah, my mom tried that one with me. Last week. I think she’s trying to tell me something.
Like a sponge boomerang. I always laugh when my 3 yr old daughter compliments me for giving in to her whims: “You’re a good jobber, Mom”; or as the backseat driver who yells “Mom! Don’t say naughty words to that stupid driver, you have to use nice words”. But my favorite is listing to her communicate her own logical grammar when asking “What are these are for?”
holy crap! what a classic :)
my brother couldn’t say his r sounds. they were all w’s. pretty funny to see him get mad at my other brother robbie and yell at him. somehow “Shut up, Wobbie” just didn’t come across as menacing as he’d hoped.
I had to spend a year in speech therapy learning my R sounds because my dad thought it was cute that I talked like Elmer Fudd and encouraged me to do it for his friends.
I swear, somtimes I wish I still had some of his ashes so I could mix them with paste and use them to grout the tile floors of public bathrooms in Pioneer Square.
I went to speech therepy…. I used to have a mild stutter. I also called my older sister leflie instead of leslie
Oh, wonderful :-) !
Do you reckon, perhaps, that if we all still lived in very close-knit tribes of twenty to thirty each, and all shared that whole childrearing thing, that it would be less insanity inducing? It’s just a thought I have from time to time. I do like tribes.
one day my three year old daughter and i were shopping for a birthday card for my husband ..after looking for a while she looked up at me and said” mommy, these cards are no good….you have to find one with money in it!!! never know what you will hear from the mouth of a babe!!!
Our favorite came one Sunday after church. We were discussing our son on the way home in the car. It had actually been a good day. I said our two year old had been good, only a little boisterous.
At this an indignate voice from the back seat shouted
“I not a little boisterous, I a big boisterous!”