It's so hard to be 2....

<i>I'm cross-posting this from a parenting forum where I originally wrote the following dialog; it so perfectly summarized the difficulties of being a 2-year-old that I wanted to have it here, as well.</i>

 

Oh, the trials of being two....  Noah's been in a phase of wanting his waffle WHOLE in the morning, so I didn't cut it, I just buttered it and put a light drizzle of syrup on it, and gave it to him.

HIM: SCREAMSCREAMSCREAM! Much waving of fork!

Me: Darling, do you want me to cut it?

HIM: CUTITCUTITCUTIT! SCREAMSCREAMSCREAM! Continued waving of fork!

Me: <cuts one strip of waffle, and then into bites.>

HIM: YESCUTCUTCUT!

Me: <cuts second strip of waffle>

HIM: WAFFLEBROKEN! WAFFLEBROKEN! <crying as if heart would break/>

Me: Huh?

HIM: <Hysterical meltdown/>

Me: Befuddled...

I think I ended with a big hug and explanation that it's so hard to be a 2-year-old and not be able to explain what you want, and I want to give him what he wants, but sometimes I just can't tell -- do you want a new waffle? And then a new waffle, which he carried into the car and ate, sniffling, with nothing on it, and then a little quiet voice in that perfect little bell-tone says "Thank you, Mommy!"

I never get over how fast he shifts gears.

L'Shannah Tovah

Tonight we begin the observance of Rosh Hashanah, and I believe it will be my son's first memorable experience with a religious holiday. He was practically born into our synagogue; he was born at 5:00 on a Friday, and was at the Friday night service with me a week later -- granted, I was sitting in a super-cushioned chair that had been brought into the sanctuary just for me.... And let's face it -- that's appropriate for a boy whose parents met in that sanctuary, and were married there.

The last year has been particularly hard for me, in a religious sense. We haven't mastered Tot Shabbat, much less the ability to sit through a Friday night or Saturday morning service, which means that my spiritual life has been relegated to "things we can do at home," and "occasions when it would be inappropriate not to attend and so one of us goes alone and the other stays home," plus the occasional "bar or bat mitzvah warranting a babysitter." I feel like I've taken a year-long vacation from God, and it feels weird. I was tight with God for a long time, and I feel like I've had to set Him aside in favor of maternal responsibilities.

So tonight, I've planned to stay home with my boy while my husband and stepson attend services, and the wee boy and I can start to create our own Rosh Hashanah tradition. Ideally, I'd like it to exclude television, no matter how educational, and include some rituals that may create a memory for him that will guide him into the natural flow of the religious year for us. Tonight, we'll eat all the apples we want, I think, and honey right off the spoon. We'll make a honeycake for tomorrow's dinner, and we'll light candles. I think I'll read him some of the prayers from the service we'll be missing, and maybe I can work on teaching him some new songs.

When I was a teenager, watching my parents prepare for Christmas for me and my younger brother, I often wondered how they could get so excited about setting up for a holiday that was fairly one-sided -- they did all these preparations and worked so hard to create an environment that made such an impression on us, and apparently got so little out of it. I hadn't realized, of course, how much joy there could be in creating especially these first impressions of these important family moments that would form our visceral memories of childhood, and create such magic for us.

Tonight I feel the responsibility for creating that magic, in a tradition that I came to and was not born and raised into. I'm hoping that I can do it justice, and create the same kind of magic for my little boy that my parents created for me and my brothers. It's an awesome responsibility, when you get down to it, made complex by having to occasionally pull out reference materials to make sure that I'm doing it "right."

Good Lord, what HAVE I done?

So this morning, I was brushing my teeth, and as I was leaning over the sink to spit, I felt the unusual sensation of being goosed by something rubbery and flexible and small. I look back behind me and there is my little boy, very intently attempting to stick his pacifier, let's be candid, into my butt. I believe my exact words were "precisely WHAT makes you think THAT'S a good idea, child?" and he scurried out of the room with the same focused intent with which he entered it. It's clear that he planned this -- it was a premeditated goosing gone wrong, and he needed to leave the scene and regroup.

Some days, I worry about what I've done, bringing this sweet little boy into this world. Maybe it's because I read the news today, and maybe it's because colleagues of mine and I got into a debate about the fate of the "free world" after lunch, and maybe it's because I read the summary of that book about the last election... Our President is "the devil." Bits are falling off the Space Shuttle and getting in the way of reentry. It didn't help that I saw news just a few minutes ago gleefully announcing that the new partical smasher they're building isn't going to create a black hole so big it'll destroy the earth... they don't think... You know, if you have to TELL me that? I'm nervous about it, even if you're trying to be reassuring.

There was just so much negative to see in the world today that it makes me wonder if having a baby wasn't the most selfish thing I could ever have done. It makes me think in some kind of stark way that someday I'm going to be forced to leave him alone here on this planet with mutant attack e.coli in the spinach and with most of the rest of the world thinking his nation is the collective set of the biggest assholes on the planet. "Hey, kid, I've got a great planet for you here -- good luck." Some days, life just feels that fast, too. I'm springing this on him; he didn't even get a vote in the thing.

And then I watch his little mind operate and all I can do is pray that he'll do just fine and keep his spirit intact. Because you'd hate to lose the kind of spirit that could put together a plan like the one he launched on me this morning. Frankly, the world needs a little more of that, and a lot less of what it's got.

Tonight, in celebration....

...I bought my son underwear.

Certain events of the last few days left me with an unprecedented 2 hours of totally free time, and cause for celebration. The best use of it that I could think of? Going to the Disney store to buy my son Finding Nemo underwear.

A year ago during our summer vacation, he demanded to "go potty," and we thought "Yippee!" -- and that was the end of it. The potty I got for him last spring sits unused in the corner of the bathroom, generally with a book on it. All invitations to sit on the potty go unaffirmed -- I think he thinks that if he ignores me long enough, I'll give it up.

And that's the way he's been his whole life. If you try to force a change, it never goes well, but if you give him a little bit of time, he comes to it on his own. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm here to help, but HE's the one who's growing up.

So he has a half a dozen pairs of underwear now, and we've looked at them and the pictures of Nemo and Gill and Crush and Bruce, and the one pair that has little tiny blue sillouhette fish all over it, and so he knows that they're there. My job, now, is clearly to shut up about it and let him decide when he's ready to take the next big step toward growing up.

Oh, please, little boy -- not too fast.

..and then my mind went blank

Tonight, as I was listening to some show on the television with half an ear, I had the flash of inspiration for The! Very! Thing! that I could write, become famous on, put my child through college on -- the concept that was my very reason for existing on this earth to communicate. Brilliant! I couldn't believe it -- here it was! And in just a moment, I would get up, come to the computer, start outlining it, and begin to make my mark in the world.

But then my mind went blank. Utterly and completely blank, like a big magnet had come down from the sky and erased the last 2 minutes of tape in my head. Gone. Completely and utterly gone. Like that dream that you have that's so funny that you just have to wake up and tell someone, and you turn to your spouse and say "I just had the most amazing dream -- there were mice in it, and ... well, a wall. Mice, and a wall, and it was so amazing and insightful, and funny! Oh, it was such a wonderful dream!" And your spouse, who has to get up in 45 minutes for work and really didn't need this, looks at you and says "You woke me up. At 3:45 in the morning. To tell me. That you had a dream. About mice. And a WALL?"

"Well, it wasn't just a wall, it was a kind of third dimension, and if you went through it, well, there were mice there too. But NICE mice." It begins to sound stupid, even to you, and you wrack your brain to remember why you felt compelled, again, to shake your beloved from slumber to hear this lame-ass excuse for something interesting. There was something else in it, something so huge that you had to wake up... But what WAS IT?

It was like that, really. The idea was just here -- can I recreate it? So I dashed madly to the basement to catch the Tivo before the program went off the schedule, to see if I could Tivo it and watch it again, and maybe have the idea again, and with 20 seconds to spare I find the spot in the schedule listing and it's ...

Educational programming from the local community college. No information on the episode at all that would let me identify it on the schedule to record. Nothing, but the list of sponsors at the end of the show. But wait! It's based on a grant from the Annenberg Foundation! Hooray -- a clue! So I ran up here to the office, hunted down the Annenberg Foundation, found the program, signed up for their video on demand program, found the very episode, fast-forwarded to the very moment where I had the very important revelation, and...

Nothing. No amazing idea. Cute program on Romantic Comedy. Nothing amazing. No insight. Certainly nothing that will put my son through college.

Maybe I just drifted off to sleep briefly during the show and dreamed the idea.... It had something to do with mice, I think. And a wall. Perhaps I should go wake my beloved husband and tell him about it...

Nah.

The jokes continue....

This weekend, he came up with another one. His first play on words. It came out during a wrestling match, when he very sincerely said "No, Mommy -- not tickle... TACKLE!" And tried to knock me over. It must be the Dr. Seuss. I knew that man was a genius....

My son's first joke....

For mother's day, when my son was just about a year old, I took myself to the mall, made the rounds of the jewelry stores, and found myself a small mother-and-child pendant, so that I would have something that connected me to him during the day when I'm at work. Little did I know that his day care provider has the exact same necklace.

So when he began to play with it, I asked him, "Who is that?" It was rhetorical, of course -- I was fully prepared to explain to him that it was Mommy and Noah, and that I wore it because I miss him during the day -- but he had an answer. "CAR-CAR!" which is, of course, the nickname he calls his day care provider. "WHAT?" I replied. "It's not! It's Mommy! Mommy and Noah!" "It's Car-Car," he replied. This went on for some time.

When I told her about it later, she told me that she's had other parents really uncomfortable that she became a part of their child's mental life like that -- that she's actually lost children because the parents were a little too jealous of the love the child felt for this woman who cares for them all day. It made me a little sad, really, and I resolutely put aside any negative feeling I had about Noah associating the necklace with her.

It's been several months, and we still have the conversation. "Noah, who is this?" I point to my necklace. See, now he knows that he can make me nuts with his answers -- it's quite a game. "Daddy!" he yells. "DADDY? DADDY? It's NOT!" I shout back. "Now, seriously who is it?" "LUCY!" he cries, indicating the dog, of all things. "WHAT? That is NOT the dog! Who is it?" "Brother!" The list gets longer. He adds to it; I act as dramatically incensed as I can that he doesn't say that it's me, and then smother him with kisses in all his ticklish spots. And ask again. And very quietly, he whispers, "Car-Car!" and then tries to cover his entire body with his hands in preparation for the onslaught, and snorts with laughter.

His first joke. At my expense. I feel so special.

Things I never thought I'd hear myself say...

Last night, I heard myself yell at my son for something I never anticipated. After a long, exhausted work day, I arrived home to my 2-year-old wanting nothing more than to sit with me on the sofa watching a cartoon and to rub his eyes on my big toe. I felt my not-perfectly polished nails scraping against the skin of his eyelid, and then heard the voice of a worn-out working Mommy shout "SON! GET OFF MY TOES!" My husband dismissed me for a "timeout" and suggested that I put on some shoes.

There are some things you just don't expect to hear yourself saying. Yelling at your son for shoving your big toe into his eyesocket happens to be one, at least for me.