Something About Kids Part 3

     As time purposefully trudges forth, I have come to realize that my children are rapidly becoming more and more insane. No, this is not a fact that has just recently occurred to me, but I suppose I just assumed this would happen far further down the line when, say, I have been eaten by a pack of wild dogs. Something new strikes my nerves each and every day from sun-up to sunset that solidifies the point that all three of my kids are, quite possibly, from another galaxy.

Take for instance the simple fact that I will tell the boys something relatively important just before they nod off for the night. Wait, let me stop there in order to wend off on a slight tangent. Nodding off is such a foreign concept to Charlie and Simon as to make me seriously think that when I am asking them to go to sleep I might as well be speaking Mandarin Chinese. These two have more of a difficult time settling down than a sack of cracked-up ferrets. Seriously, I have witnessed scientists on the brink of discovering time travel contain their explosive nerves more easily than my boys. So, basically what I’m attempting to get at here is that, despite my best efforts, it takes the act of each wearing down the other before sleep can even be considered. But I digress, and return to the path on which I was previously traversing. I will say to the boys, “Tomorrow we are going out to lunch and to the store,” (for instance) and they will be thrilled and start shooting sparks from their little butts and then, eventually, succumb to the Sandman. Well, morning rolls around and they ask, “What are we doing today?” Hmm. Okay, I’ll bend, perhaps they’ve had a dream that has rendered them completely someone else temporarily. “Really?” I ask, stupidly, “We are, as I told you less than ten hours ago, going out to lunch and to the store.” And then, though the colorful fireworks from the posterior were wonderful the night before, the kids literally explode on the spot. It just stuns me how little they retain from just a night of sleep! It’s like puppies forgetting simple commands after, like, three minutes. It never fails.

I hesitate to admit this, but my twenty-month old daughter has turned into a bitch. Perhaps she’s acquiring the practice she needs to defend herself from the future onslaught of boys. Or, conversely, maybe she’s just a little snot a lot of the time like oh so many women I know. Please, don’t defend yourselves, I know it’s just human nature that all females get to act like horrid, pissy beasts as frequently as they see fit, I get it. But isn’t there an age when this transformation is supposed to take place? Twenty months seems awfully early on to be conniving and evil, don’t you think? I’d also be willing to bet that her brothers have a thing or two to do with it, what with their constant irritation and annoyances. But does that really excuse the fact that she has begun sneaking up on them at inopportune moments and clobbering them in the back with whatever thick, solid object she can find? I think that it does not. And, by the way, she bites. Fortunately this has become more of a defensive play normally saved for the times when Simon is treating her like a doll by lifting her and kind of flinging her about. Boy, when she bites it’s like fangs from a rodent; it generates welts and, frequently, blood. I’m still questioning if she’s somehow got vampire genes in her. Also, as it turns out, she’s some kind of Bionic indestructible she-beast with more intestinal fortitude and moxie than either of her brothers! She’ll take a wrastlin’ and come back for more while she’s shrilly yelling at her antagonizers to, “SIT DOWN, BROTHERS!” Ya know, maybe she’s just the very bitch we need around this joint during times of duress. She’s my enforcer!

Sneakiness and being coy are inherent among children, this is a fact that I already know since, well, I was a kid, too, and pretty much the king of attempting to get away with some kind of naughty deed or another. And I think that’s why it bothers me so damn much when I discover Charlie slumped over the toilet slowly drizzling the last of the entire bottle of mommy’s shampoo into the bowl. Or, when I slip out of the room to use the can myself and I come out to find Simon with a chair reaching into the freezer within our fenced-off kitchen retrieving a Popsicle for himself sporting those deer-caught-in-headlights look about him. And when I realize I no longer hear a ruckus coming from the boy’s room/play room and march down the hall to spy everyone perched innocently in Addy’s crib while Simon proudly announces, “Wanna watch us jump again, Daddy?” There is just no way to hide, put-up, conceal, or otherwise relocate everything in the house when children are present because, given half a chance, they will find things… always.

Yep, more and more every day I have to sit back, take a few breaths, and wonder internally when those aliens plan on returning our normal children. I sure hope it’s soon, someone is starting to pick a lock…

Stew