Mr. I-Don't-Know-Whose-Child-This-Is
There are some days I look at my son and gaze wonderingly upon his beautiful, innocent face. My heart swells with joy and pride, and I cannot help myself but to pick him up and shower his face with kisses, at least until he squirms away.
Today was not one of those days.
I came to the realization sometime between the refusal to use a fork and the ensuing fight and the fact that his feelings were mortally hurt when I asked him to stop jumping on his father, that despite my sincere attempts to the contrary, I am raising a true drama-king. The screams, the tears, the choking on the tears, they are too much for me. The demands for a Kleenex and the sobbing insistence of, "I c-c-caaan't h-h-heeeeellllp iiiiit!" when told to calm down are wearing thin of their initial cuteness way back in year three.
I had read somewhere that age four was good. Age four was an age where they were getting better at communicating. It was supposed to be an age that gave me a brief respite from the difficulties of ages 2 and 3, respectively.
I had thought four was an age of trust, where I could finally possibly let him take a shower without hovering over him the entire time to make sure he did not fall bodily out of the tub when trying to make "handprints" on the bath mat with his wet hands. When I could allow him to play in his room for ten minute stretches without walking in to find orange chalk crushed into the beige carpet. When I could finally leave him alone in the bathroom without discovering a half roll of toilet paper shredded all over the floor.
Wrong.
He was ahem, using the potty for purpose number two, and I was getting ready to go out to lunch with a friend. Time was running short for him to get dressed for school, so I assisted him with the cleaning aspects and shuffled him off to his father to get dressed. I had noticed the books on the floor, but I was in a hurry and did not pick them up.
Stupid move.
After I had picked him up from school two and a half hours later, I remembered that the bathroom was messy and set out to fix it. I picked up one of the books, an electronic one that plays music. I noticed a liquid yellow substance that looked and smelled rather suspiciously like pee dripping from it and a puddle of it on the floor where the book had previously been.
Rounding on him, Iscreeched asked him how the heck did pee get all over his book? Ok, I admit that I was yelling. We have gone over how to treat books a billion times over, and somehow even though I don't think I ever specifically addressed peeing on them, I was pretty sure I had kind of covered that territory in a general sense. He refused to tell me what had happened, squinting his eyes and saying, "I don't trust you." Yeah, mister, well I don't trust you either.
Finally, he told me that the book had been dirty and out of a great sense of duty and responsibility, had wanted to wash it off. With. Pee.
Yup, totally swelling with pride over here.
Today was not one of those days.
I came to the realization sometime between the refusal to use a fork and the ensuing fight and the fact that his feelings were mortally hurt when I asked him to stop jumping on his father, that despite my sincere attempts to the contrary, I am raising a true drama-king. The screams, the tears, the choking on the tears, they are too much for me. The demands for a Kleenex and the sobbing insistence of, "I c-c-caaan't h-h-heeeeellllp iiiiit!" when told to calm down are wearing thin of their initial cuteness way back in year three.
I had read somewhere that age four was good. Age four was an age where they were getting better at communicating. It was supposed to be an age that gave me a brief respite from the difficulties of ages 2 and 3, respectively.
I had thought four was an age of trust, where I could finally possibly let him take a shower without hovering over him the entire time to make sure he did not fall bodily out of the tub when trying to make "handprints" on the bath mat with his wet hands. When I could allow him to play in his room for ten minute stretches without walking in to find orange chalk crushed into the beige carpet. When I could finally leave him alone in the bathroom without discovering a half roll of toilet paper shredded all over the floor.
Wrong.
He was ahem, using the potty for purpose number two, and I was getting ready to go out to lunch with a friend. Time was running short for him to get dressed for school, so I assisted him with the cleaning aspects and shuffled him off to his father to get dressed. I had noticed the books on the floor, but I was in a hurry and did not pick them up.
Stupid move.
After I had picked him up from school two and a half hours later, I remembered that the bathroom was messy and set out to fix it. I picked up one of the books, an electronic one that plays music. I noticed a liquid yellow substance that looked and smelled rather suspiciously like pee dripping from it and a puddle of it on the floor where the book had previously been.
Rounding on him, I
Finally, he told me that the book had been dirty and out of a great sense of duty and responsibility, had wanted to wash it off. With. Pee.
Yup, totally swelling with pride over here.
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