The Boy is 3. Don't Sing To Him.

The other night I put my son down to bed for the last time as a 2-year-old. As I lay down next to him to stroke his hair, the sentimentality of the moment coursing through me, I kissed him lovingly on the forehead and said, "It's your birthday tomorrow buddy. I can't believe you're going to be three."

To which he replied, "No I'm not. I don't love you."

The next day we set out for bagels at our favorite bagel place to kick off the birthday fun-tivites. Though he assured us that he didn't want a birthday, he wanted to eat at home, he didn't want us to sing and he didn't like any of us, we know that meant, "I love you guys so much! Please take me to Back East Bagel!" and so off we went. His attitude sweetened a bit once we started eating, aided immensely by the fact that we got him a chocolate chip bagel with strawberry cream cheese and all seemed right with the world. 

Until he started screaming for his fork and spoon to the top of his lungs. 

This wouldn't seem like a big deal on paper, as you aren't able to hear that my son pronounces the word "fork" exactly as one would pronounce the word "fuck". When screamed, the words "fork" followed by the word "and" blended together until it sounded like he was screaming "WHERE'S MY FUCKIN' SPOON?! I WANT MY FUCKIN' SPOON!" 

The people at the adjoining tables all turned to stare in horror as we gazed upon him with panic in our throats and did the only thing that any rational person would do. We screamed back at him, leading the conversation to go something like this.

Him: WHERE'S MY FUCKIN' SPOON?!

Us (in unison): YOU WANT YOUR FORK AND SPOON?! YOU'RE LOOKING FOR YOUR FORK AND SPOON?!

Him: GIMME MY FUCKIN' SPOON!

Other people:

We left shortly thereafter.

With a birthday party planned for the evening, I naturally saved all cleaning and decorating to the last fucking possible minute and spent the rest of the afternoon running around like a crazy person on four hours of sleep. You may ask yourself, "Why didn't you do any prep the night before if you stayed up so late? What were you doing?"

Like a genius, I chose to use all of the hours of kid free time the night before as they slept not to clean or organize efficiently but listening to Howard Stern and drawing a Pin The Tool on Handy Manny game. I won't stand for ANYONE saying that I don't know how to prioritize. 

I regret nothing

The birthday boy really pitched in during the pre-party chaos too.

Actually, this was more helpful than most anything else he could've done.

The party began and I gotta say, I was struck all day by the absolutely intrinsic differences between boys and girls. Julia woke up on her birthday and ran around in delight all day, relishing the birthday songs and attention, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the decorations and begging for the party to start. Patrick could NOT have cared less. In fact, he seemed almost annoyed any time we tried to give him attention for it and insisted all day long that it wasn't his birthday. Some dudes are made. Others are born. He is an example of the latter. 

That's not to say he wasn't excited about certain things. The cake coaxed a little smile out of him.

Oreos and frosting and candy, oh my!

As did the fruit salad dump truck.

My shirt looked like I'd murdered someone after carving this.

His smile was quickly dashed, however, when we had the audacity to sit him at the table in front of his cake and sing Happy Birthday to him.

How is he pissed about this? How??

He became immediately annoyed at the opening strains of the birthday song and started to bury his face in my side. I moved around behind him, which prompted him to cover his eye and start angrily "shush-ing" everyone for the entire duration of the tune. Really dude? You have a chocolate cake that looks like a construction zone in front of you with Oreo crumbles making up the 3, all while a candle you get to blow out burns brightly as everyone you love in the whole world sings to you and this sucks for you? This is an inconvenience? 

Honestly, I couldn't stop laughing. The similarities between he and his dad are so incredibly apparent, even at this age, that i'ts absolutely mind boggling. Even if he IS angry that you kissed him good morning. He's a surly little shit. They both are. But they're my surly little shits and I wouldn't change a damn thing about either of them.

 

Happy 3rd Birthday, you salty goofball.

Visions Of Dinner Plates Dancing Through The Air

People always say, "Ugh. The terrible twos are the worst!" It's become so ubiquitous in our collective psyche that we take it as a foregone conclusion. If you have a child, when they reach the age of two they will become the spawn of hell. The people that assert this ever pervasive factoid are incorrect, however.

In fact, I think they are dirty liars.

Two is a cake walk. Two is a spring stroll through a park that fronts a small lake during a strawberry festival where the breeze wafts the heavenly scents of berries and funnel cake and the lilting music of children's laughter as they go around in a tightly controlled circle on a docile pony ride while their parents take pictures and smile contentedly up into the perfect blue sky while butterflies dance in the perfumed air. Two is fucking great.

"Terrible" twos my ass. This is amaze-balls!

The time for fear, my friends, is not two. At two a child has not had the time to level up enough in the game of life in order to unleash their full evil onto the world. They try, I will give them that. They cross their arms defiantly over their chests with a pouty look on their face and shout "No!" if they don't want to eat yogurt for a snack. If they're extremely afronted they may even add in a good foot stomp to punctuate their ire. But they're two. They're small and still kinda pudgy and their lips are all puckered in an attempt to scowl and their heads smell like the bath that they've just gotten. Frankly, try as they might, their baby anger is unimpressive at two and it's really kinda cute.

I'm like, "Are you effectively capturing how pissed off he is?"

And then they turn three.

Three takes the foot stomping, "No!" shouting and arm crossing to another level. Three adds in fun phrases like, "I don't want yogurt and I don't love you anymore!" Three adds the throwing of the yogurt container on the ground or into the sink along with the foot stomp and three adds a screaming melt down that lasts for twenty minutes to the ensuing time out they earned for the attitude problem and violent yogurt chucking you just endured.

I want to say I'm being a nurturing mother here, but I think I'm just counting to ten so I don't lose my shit.

My daughter was born with a strong personality and so all through the last year I've written stories that centered largely around her and the types of shennanigans she pulled along with my clueless and fairly ridiculous responses to them. I haven't been perfect at dealing with her. Far from it. However, as she neared four and began to show glimmers of self control and higher communication skills, the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel began to barely spark to life.

The days of screaming at me in malls are lessening...until she hits 15 and it ramps up again.

For several months, things were fairly quiet. We could go places and they would sit and eat their food.

Corn dogs and hats make for a great afternoon.

We became the freaking poster family for normalcy.

I mean, c'mon, we're like that stock photo family that comes in the frame when you buy it.

And then that which we'd already survived reared its head again and my son began to near three. My husband and I had tried to comfort ourselves during the worst of it with my daughter by asserting that Patrick's threes wouldn't be as bad. Their personalities are very different and we just couldn't imagine that he would reach the levels of hysteria, stubbornness and outright psychosis that Julia did.

We were right that his threes would be different. Our theory that they would be better was shot down to a million pieces.

I don't even know where to begin. First off, he has developed a love affair with the toilet. It started with his overwhelming compulsion to place entire rolls of toilet paper in them.

Really?

To my knowledge he has flushed toilet paper, hair bands, pieces of foam from the memory foam mattress cover that now covers my bed in a piecemeal fashion, dog food, fruit snacks, change and small toys. That's only what I know about. Oh, and he also flushed two toothbrushes down there. I know about those because the toilet was hopelessly clogged for two days until we could get a plumber out to snake it for $85. Most expensive Spiderman and Strawberry Shortcake toothbrushes in the country.

He also has a hair trigger when he wakes up now.

Between the two of them, even though Julia's behavior has markedly improved, I find myself on the verge of hysteria at least 50% of the time. After an ill fated trip to Whole Foods, the refusal of both kids to clean up the Mega Blocks strewn across the house like land mines and fight after fight over who had the cape made out of the Curious George material first I found myself on the brink of insanity this evening. I had stayed calm, I had used my words, I had employed better strategies and if I could just get their pizza on plates and finish up my pasta we'd be home free.

I brought their meals to the table and turned to finish preparing mine when I heard behind me, "Patrick has the penguin plate! I want the penguin plate!"

I turned slowly and pinned her with my eyes. "I gave you the Minnie Mouse plate. You love that one."

She was undeterred and, reaching for her brother's plate, continued her furious protestations. "I hate the Minnie plate! I want the penguin plllllaaaaaatttttteeeeee!"

Ladies and gentlemen, behold our next exhibit! This one is a truly grotesque and terrifying oddity! I give you, the certifiably insane, Plate Throwing Mom!

I stormed over to the cabinet, yanked a second penguin plate out and marched back over to the table where I dumped her pizza in an unceremonious heap into the center of it before I stomped over to the back door.

"You hate the Minnie plate? You never have to deal with it again then!"

And with that, I threw the Minnie Mouse plate (it is plastic. I'm not homicidal, I'm merely an asshole) like a frisbee during a rousing game on a sunny beach toward the back alley. It sailed majestically from my back door, over my yard and then just bounced off of the cinder block wall with enough force to cause several shards to break free and scatter in different directions like a melamine fireworks display before disappearing from sight. It was like being at a fabulous Greek restaurant for a birthday party only the party is really angry and irrational. And in an alley.

I can't take the whining about this plate! Oopah!

At this point my son is screaming at me and my daughter is demanding that I go out into the alley and bring the plate back. I sat down to the table with my dinner and calmly ate like Nero watching Rome burn. They slowly realized that I was not going to be retrieving the plate any time soon and settled into eating their pizza. Dinner was on the quiet side.

I think it's going to be another interesting year.