Kids are funny. Take my 2 year old, for example.
– No please – take him.
*canned laughter*
We are in the thick of Craig being a total tyrant. Don’t get me wrong, he’s so funny and cute. A friend recently came to visit, and called him the silverback gorilla – short legs, long arms, sturdy and strong and a little bit intimidating. (She also says she’s buying him the COLLEGE shirt that Belushi wears in Animal House – because right?) He’s talking up a storm – right now he prefaces most statements with “I mean.”
ME: What’s your name?
C: I mean, my name’s Craiggy boy*
ME: Craig, you want some lunch?
C: I mean, Nope mama, I wants ice cream sammich.
When I get ready in the morning, he’s my little shadow. Not many two year old boys get made up every morning with Oil of Olay moisturizer, cherry chapstick, mousse in their hair, and a tiny air-wisp of mascara, but Craig demands that he do everything I do and I usually just let him have it in order to be able to finish my own morning routine in something less than a million hours. The other day he insisted on applying deodorant, and I handed him the stick with the cap on, but that just wouldn’t do. He painstakingly wrestled the cap off, then dipped it under his shirt like he sees us do. The whole block of deodorant came out of the plastic applicator and fell to the floor, cracking a couple pieces, and that upset Craig’s whole apple cart as well as forcing me to try to apply a half cake of crumbly deodorant to my body without getting it all over my work clothes.
He’s also pseudo potty training at this point – by his own request. He wears a pull up and occasionally will decide that he has to go potty. He must pull the pants and diaper down – you may not help. He must climb onto the potty – he’s pretty good at it, climbing around the hole, although occasionally a foot dips down into the bowl – but Lord forbid you help on that either. He actually does go most times, a tiny bit, though he definitely doesn’t hold it between-times and we still change diapers regularly. Then he demands the “paper towel” or “napkin”, which are the two things he calls toilet paper. We do the “how much do I let him waste?” dance for a little while, then he asks “can I put it in mom?” He drops in the wad of tp, climbs painstakingly off the bowl, flushes forty seven times, drags a stool over to the sink, and washes his hands for twenty minutes until he’s used up all of the hand soap and run up our water bill. Then he puts his own clothes back on, and two hours after it started, the potty visit is over. Often, three minutes later he wants to do it all again. He *really* digs flushing and washing hands.
There are lots of rules and routines with a 2 year old. I usually don’t get home until after 7, but I am not permitted to enter the front door until Craig has been fetched and permitted to come fling it wide. He will smile broadly, gesture behind him, and say “Come on in!” and then shout “Surprise!” which is all very cute but sometimes when it’s ten thousand degrees outside and I’m melting inside my work clothes and I’m getting home from working 10 hours straight with no lunch break or anything, I really just want to come inside to the AC and drop my crap on the floor and get dinner going. The punishment for failure to honor Craig’s routines is pretty steep, though, so I usually just wait.
He picks fights with his big brothers, constantly. He is driving poor sensitive Jack to distraction, and even our thicker-skinned Liam is occasionally broken by Craig’s torture tactics. The other day, Craig had both his big brothers out-and-out sobbing with frustration, which is often what I want to do but being the grown up in the house, instead of weeping I just slam doors and throw trash away roughly and basically take out all of my frustration on inanimate objects, then chirp with false patience/optimism “Come on Craig, you want to go see the garbage truck” or whatever distraction I can come up with. I know this won’t last long – he’s probably about to have some major developmental thing happen, which is usually what a few weeks of hell-child tends to preface, in all of the kids. But man, right now we just careen from one tantrum to another and it’s wearing us all down. Right this second he’s napping and every one of us is just flat out on a couch, exhausted from managing his melt downs this morning. First thing this a.m. he woke up and demanded Big Hero 6 (this is a kid’s movie, he calls it “Baymax” after one of the characters). So I put that on and then he wailed for Thomas. So I put on Thomas and then he wailed that he like Thomas best, he wants to watch Thomas – even as Thomas himself is up there on the screen. I pointed out the #1 blue Engine there on the screen, puffing mightily beside Sir Topham Hatt, and Craig cried “I don’ like Thomas, I want Bay maaaaaaax!” Basically, whatever we’ve got going on is wrong.
We shall live. Jack calls him “a maniac,” and so I showed Jack a youtube video of himself having a flailing wailing tantrum at age 2, rolling himself around on the floor and then occasionally peeking to check and see if anyone was watching, and said “I survived you, you’ll survive Craig.” Liam is much better at tuning him out. I happily hand him over to daycare each morning, and they tell me he’s an absolute angel and never has a fit, so either they’re lying or he’s saving it all up for home. Either one is believable.
Anyway. Boy I love that kid, and his little turns of phrase and funny little rituals crack me up, but I really miss having a non-chewed-on Chapstik and non-crushed-to-a-powder deodorant and being able to play a game without him barreling in gathering up all the playing pieces and then hollering and hurling them across the room. Which is what happened to Liam’s and my game of Chinese checkers this morning. “MYYYY MARBLES!”
Sigh. Ugh, two. I anticipate in a month he’ll be recovered, but until then. . .
*They must call him this at his new daycare, because as of the last two weeks, this is what he calls himself.