My three year old is systematically destroying my will to live, one morning at a time

The Professor is on his last sojourn out of town for work for the foreseeable future, meaning I am no longer a single mom 3 weekday mornings a week.  This comes about a month too late for me.  Yup, about a month ago I ceased being capable of managing these two children in the mornings, because of my size, my breathlessness, and my utter lack of energy and need to sleep like Rip van Winkle.  Despite my needs, 5:30 rolls around every darn morning, and up I must get, and half an hour later up they must get, and fed they must be, and dressed for the day they must become, and to the bus stop we must walk by 6:45 at the latest, and I don’t know why I’ve turned into  Yoda just now but maybe it has something to do with the fact that MY THREE YEAR OLD IS TURNING THIS MORNING ROUTINE INTO A HELLSCAPE THAT THREATENS TO CATAPULT HIS MOTHER INTO EARLY LABOR.  EVERY. DAMN. DAY.

God, I love that kid.  I love his charm, his pluck, his mischief, his intelligence and wit. I love his short legs and long torso, his buzz-short hair, his brown eyes so dark you can’t see the pupils.  I love him every minute of the day, from the time in the morning when he bounds out of bed and into my arms to be carried downstairs for breakfast (even now, him at nearly 40 pounds and me at 33 weeks pregnant) to the time in the evening when he invariably hollers at me as I’ve left him tucked into bed at night, post-story, and says “I just wanna tell you sumpin’, just a quick one,” and then spends five minutes looking around the room for an idea of something to talk about while I stand there and wait for him to spit it out.  I love him each minute of the day in between those times . . . except the minutes between about 6:20 and 6:45, when he turns my life into a living hectic hell and I really just wish I could tie him up in something to keep him safe while I manage getting his brother on the bus, and then come back and deal with him later.

Today I actually had to abandon him, melted into a wailing puddle of misery in the dead center of our street, while Jack and I ran after his bus that had just passed us by and tried to flag her down.  We were late because Liam had meltdowns between the minutes of 6:40 and 6:50 for the following reasons:

• I wanted him to wear a jacket, and he didn’t want to;
• I let him just leave the house without a jacket, and he was too cold;
• I went back in to get him a jacket, and Sir preferred a different colored jacket, which I could not find;
• I got him into the unsuitable jacket, but didn’t zip it;
• I zipped it, but didn’t zip it all the way;
• I did not do up the eleventy-billion snaps that close over the zip (we are still on the porch at this point, it is now 6:52, and I can hear the bus coming);
• He could not reach the hood to put it on, but did not want me to help him put the hood on, and did not want to exist in this world wearing a hooded jacket without the hood on;
• I instructed Jack to hustle up to the stop at the end of our cul-de-sac without us while I fiddled with the ongoing jacket problems, and then Jack was too far ahead and was leaving Liam behind.

And this is just the meltdowns related to the outerwear.  There were others that preceded this fiasco, related to clothing choice, shoe choice, the placement of a Thomas the Tank Engine sticker on his person, the color of his juice cup, etc.

I was not alone as the subject of his ire.  The bus driver also earned herself a black mark in Liam’s book when she inevitably sailed past our stop while we were still too far away for her to see or stop.  Liam’s whole world ended, his legs ceased working, and he fell into a wailing mass of fury in the middle of the street at the gall of this bus driver not to time her arrival with his own at the stop.  Meanwhile, I know the bus turns around a few blocks away and will come back past us, so I’m dragging the dog (desperately peeing on everything in sight while being dragged) and shoving Jack to the end of the road.  Jack is so concerned that Liam is not with us that he refuses to move his feet forward and just stands there staring at his weeping brother and expressing concern that I have left him behind.  Then he bends over and picks up a couple of nice-looking leaves to show me the glory of beautiful Nature in her autumnal awesomeness.  I do adore a child’s ability to stop and smell the roses, but if we miss the bus, I have to wait 40 minutes before I can get in the car line to drop Jack off at school, which would make me late for my morning meeting, so we’ve gotta catch that bus.  Also a partner emailed me at 10:30 last night to do some emergency thing and kept me up til midnight, and then Liam woke needing to pee at 1:30 am, and for some reason at that time my morning sickness roared back at me and I threw up several times over the course of about an hour, yet that cruel, cruel alarm still went off at 5:30.  I am totally exhausted.  It’s all too much.  I want to join Liam in a heap in the middle of the street and weep myself.

Jack caught the bus.  I ran ahead of both of the kids, put myself in the middle of the street to get the bus driver to stop, and frantically waved Jack to hurry up.  Eventually he sauntered his way across the street, still very concerned about Liam, and clambered on the bus, handing me his empty juice box, his Bear, and the three leaves he’d picked up on his unhurried way up the road to the bus stop.  The dog pooped and I picked that up, and when I reached Liam he also handed me his empty juice cup, his Puppy, and two toys he’d brought with him (“my hands is cold and I need to put dem in my pockets.”)  Now I have a dog leash, two juice boxes, several leaves, two toys, a Puppy, a Bear, and a bag of poop in my arms.  But we are no longer operating on a deadline.  We can dawdle all the way home if needed.  Three year olds are much easier to handle when permitted to dawdle, and Liam hops up agreeably, then walks briskly and happily back to the house, talking about his “perfect leaf” he found, and the “awesome pink clouds” illuminated up above by the rising sun.  He chirpily climbs straight into his car seat and buckles himself in, chattering all the time about what he’s going to do in school today.  I practice deep breathing, the tears of frustration subside, the heart rate slows down, my thoughts turn to mental preparation for my morning meeting, which now I know I won’t be late for.  It is at this point that I decide to treat myself to a Starbucks breakfast this morning on the way in to work.

Anyway.  I do my best to give Liam as much control over as many choices as possible in the mornings, so he will fight me less, but man you just can’t hustle a three year old.  You just can’t.  And since I can’t bend over and manhandle him anymore, I am reduced to pleading, and then yelling, and then abandonment, hoping that the one person who tends to leave our cul-de-sac for work around 6:50 each morning sees my weeping child and doesn’t run him over where he lays, prostrate and screeching, on the center line of the road.  Giving him more time does not help the situation – the other week the dog woke him up at 4:30 am, but we were still late to the bus.  Giving him more choices does not help, as he is still too slow to execute.  I have plopped him in a stroller before to get him moving, but that often turns into a wrestling match between me, the dog, the stroller, and the two kids, and I’m just way outnumbered in that scenario.

Having another pair of adult hands, though – that helps.  And today was my last morning to have to do this alone for a while, a long while.  So hallelujah, and praise be the academic calendar that releases my husband and helper to me right when I most need him.  In a few weeks, I’ll have delivered myself of this kicking wee infant boy, and I’ll be able to bend over and get on Liam’s level again.  And when one of my older boys needs me, I can in fact leave the newborn in a safe place and tend to him later, since he can’t move (unlike my three year old).  He can scream, but he can’t reach the knives or climb the furniture or run into the street.  And when he eventually can do those things – well, then Liam will no longer be three.  Praise be.

And in case you’re wondering – a pumpkin spice latte and an artisan breakfast sandwich made the whole world a better place.