metaphortunate son

In an effort to get our goldbricking, foot-dragging children to haul their butts up the stairs after dinner without whining every step of the way or demanding a horsey ride every single night, we have instituted a game called "Tickle on the Landing". The rules of this game are that, if you are on the ground floor, either of the two stair landings, or the upper floor outside of the bathroom, you are fair game for tickling.

You may remember that I made some pathetic efforts to silicone caulk around the back door recently, and the Junebug was fascinated; therefore, he easily identified what the handyman we saw out the train window this morning was doing.

"LOOKIT!" he announced loudly, to the entire train car. "HE HAS A CAULK GUN! MAMA, LOOKIT ALL THAT PINK CAULK!"

It was indeed, for some reason, possibly only for the amusement of those around small children, bright pink caulk.

This is for my friends who have daughters.

The other day the Junebug's daycare class did some small group activity that involved the three-to-five-year-olds taking turns using a limited number of tools. At pickup, his teacher took the time to tell me that the Junebug was very insistent about making sure that everybody took turns and nobody cut in line.

If anyone ever tells you that your daughter is "bossy" because of behavior like this, please note that the teacher described my son as "helpful" and having "great social skills".

Last night I started to have a sexy dream and then it gradually started to get mixed up with a work dream and at one point I was trying to have sex inside of a PowerPoint presentation and then somehow one of our project managers was there and I basically woke myself up mentally screaming NOOOOOOO.

The other day the Junebug, talented little staller that he has become, ran over to my room when he was supposed to be getting dressed in his room instead and asked, "How does Batman say the alphabet?"

Me: [Is this a joke? Is this a real question that I somehow have to come up with a answer to?]

Me: I don't know. How does Batman say the alphabet?

Junebug: [wrinkling up a ferocious little nose] [stomping his feet so hard that his naked little butt jiggles] [DOING A SURPRISINGLY CREDITABLE CHRISTIAN BALE IMPRESSION] "A!" "B!" "C!" "D!"

It was a real joke! It was funny! He is 4!

Rocket is in like the stage of maximum adorableness. He understands more every day, but he's still all round and squishy. He's more capable every day, but he still wants to please and to be helpful. IT'S THE BEST.

You know when you run the shower before you get in to get hot water? A friend of mine started catching that water in a bucket & putting it on her tree outside. I liked that idea, but I have developed precognition since becoming a parent, and I could clearly see the future down the timeline where we decided to have an open bucket of water in a bathroom with two little house monkeys running around. So we didn't do it. But then one day I was throwing out an empty gallon plastic jug; and I had a brainwave! So now we catch the water in jugs, with lids, and I put it on my plants. I don't pretend that a gallon or so a day will make a difference to the drought; but, it makes a difference to my plants.

1. If the Junebug ever gets comfortable enough with you to tease you, he will call you an eyeball. Or diaper cream. "Hi eyeball!" he will beam. "Hi, diaper cream!" He knows he is being silly and he loves it. I don't know where "diaper cream" comes from, other than that obviously it's a thing we use around the house. Now you might think that "eyeball" grows out of his toddler obsession with eyes. I remember one time L and I took him around the small local aquarium and he helpfully and loudly pointed out the eyes on every fish that had eyes (Spoiler: every single freaking fish in that aquarium had eyes.) That eye interest I think was because he had made the connection that eyes meant alive, as in, if he saw a drawing of a plane that had eyes, it meant that it was a character - "an alive plane" as he says - and a drawing of a plane without eyes is an inert vehicle. So fish that had eyes he knew were alive, and that was very important to him, and he needed to share that information a lot. But this eyeball thing is different. This he picked up at daycare. He came home upset one day and questioning elicited the fact that some kid had called him "one eyeball;" despite the fact that, as he shakily insisted to me, "I am NOT one eyeball." But they grow up so fast; he got over himself and made the weapon his own, and now you are an eyeball and so am I and so is everyone. Hi, eyeball!


2. One day during pickup, as usual, I was crankily chivvying the Junebug through the routine of pee and then are you done? Answer me in words. Are you done? Pull up your underwear. I said stand up. Pull up your underwear and your pants -

"If you don't stop saying that I will show you my butt!"

Then he turned around, bent over, and waggled his naked butt at me.

I lost it. Oh my god, I laughed until I had to sit down. Even though I knew you can't laugh at these things or they will never end. I couldn't help it. Dude. How many times do you think I've seen your naked butt? I still wipe your butt! I could probably draw your asshole from memory! I think the shock value has been lost. Incidentally, I love your tiny adorable butt to pieces, and possibly never more so than when you are waving it at me and cracking up at your own amusingness.


3. When Rocket is very tired and sitting on my lap he will just let his head fall forward into my sternum with a thump. And then of course he has to be hugged very tight and snuggled and have his head stroked. He used to do this all the time as a baby. Constantly. It hurt! Baby heads are big and solid and heavy! And yet….it was his way of asking for hugs. So I loved it. And I had not quite realized that he had stopped doing it. Until this past weekend, when his schedule was all messed up, and he was too tired to fall asleep, and I was holding him on my lap, and…thump. And I realized that it hadn't happened in a long time. So I hugged him very tight and snuggled him and stroked his little head. And I want to write it down before I forget it. Because he is leaving babyhood behind so fast, and I'm not sure it's going to happen again.

Did I do right?

The Junebug came home from daycare the other day with the story of how his friend* Prince** had kicked him when they were lining up to go out to outdoor play. He said it had hurt. That he hadn't seen it coming, that it had come by surprise. That the teachers hadn't noticed or hadn't interfered. Which seems legit, because the teachers tell us about incidents of fighting, and no one told me about that one.

At his daycare they teach the kids to say "No!" and block the other kids with their hands if they try to push or hit or bite. He said that he said "No!" but that Prince kicked him anyway.

I asked what he did. He said he had cried. He said he thought he'd cry till I came.

(That small dry snapping sound you just heard was my heart breaking in half.)

(I should note for the record that when I actually did come to pick him up he was laughing and running around outside, totally non-traumatized, and that he told me the story without seeming to suffer any emotional pain in the retelling.)

I said that Prince should not kick him. People shouldn't hurt each other.

I pointed out that if Prince keeps hurting him (and Prince did bite him the next day, hard enough to leave a mark; and also pinched him, according to the Junebug; and the teachers did tell me about that one) then he should think about whether he wants to play with him anymore, or whether it would be better to play with other kids.

(Note for the record that the Junebug had grabbed Prince's puzzle pieces right before Prince bit him. We talked about how that's not the right way to play with someone else too.)

I generalized from that that if we hurt our friends, then they won't want to be our friends anymore; so he should not hurt other kids.

I told him that if Prince tries to hurt him again, he shouldn't just say "No!"; he should yell it as loud as he can. That way the teachers won't be able to ignore it. I told him that was the one time it was okay to use his outside voice inside. We practiced yelling "No!" as loud as we could, outside. He's, uh. He's naturally gifted in that area. He can produce a very loud "No!" We'll practice some more.

I told him that he must never kick anyone smaller than him, or who can't defend themself. Like, he must never kick babies; he must never kick Rocket.

I told him that he must never kick anyone first. (Visions of Han Solo dancing in my head.)

And then I told him that if someone kicks him again, and he screams "No!" and they don't stop, and the teachers don't help…to kick them back.

Did I do right?

I feel like you should never tell your kids to hurt another kid! It seems wrong! But I could not think of what else to tell him. Kids are gonna fight. Kids are gonna attack each other. I know my parents told me never to hurt anyone else. It seems like the right thing to say. But in reality I remember that I just took that to mean that my parents were completely out of touch with anything like my reality and there was no point in asking them for advice. "Just ignore them," my ass. "Just walk away," yeah sure I'm going to teach people that they can kick me out of any space by lifting a finger. That'll give me a peaceful time in the future, no doubt. My. Ass.

And there is no way in hell I'm going to tell him to tell a teacher. Yeah yeah, in an ideal world that's the way it would work; if there were people in charge of enforcing the social contract in a space, you could report violations to them and they would take care of it. Back to childhood reality: it's social suicide among the kids AND the teachers. Nobody, not even the supposed social contract enforcers, likes, or listens to, a tattletale.

So….what do you tell them? I'm serious. I'm officially asking for advice. If you have a solution that's worked for you, I want to hear it.

I think I did wrong. But I don't know how to do better.

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*Yes, friend; one of the two kids he plays with all the time.

**Not his real name.

Rocket is so close to being a toddler. He's basically got standing down. He goes ahead with the controlled fall forward. But then he fails to put out a foot to catch himself so he just goes back down to hands and knees. And from there he crawls to wherever he's going.

I swear to god his ears smell like sweet alyssum. We have some in the backyard, I would know. I'm sure that fragrant earwax or whatever is going to turn out to be the symptom of some horrible disease, but in the meantime, the one bright spot of the teething midnight wakings is that when I cuddle him I get to smell his little head. Why are babies so delicious.

Rocket himself has chosen to cope with his teething via cannibalism. You laugh, but he has all eight needle-sharp little front teeth, bottom and top, already, and he opens his mouth like a shark and lets his entire ten pound head fall directly on your chin. Or arm. Or his brother's back. Ow.

He can say and/or sign: no, milk, more, water, all done, Mama, Dada, book, & ball.

The Junebug was so punchy tonight, I nearly killed him trying to get ready for bed, and then I had a stroke of what I will modestly describe as genius. After potty, he announced that he was a duck, instead of pulling his trousers up and moving on to handwashing and so forth; and, sick of arguing, I started quacking at him. Well, this was the funniest goddamn thing that had ever happened, and he started laughing too hard to fight me anymore, and as long as we communicated via quacking and hand gestures, it went smoothly from then.

I posted that thing and suddenly the Junebug has become a hug monster. He is ASKING FOR HUGS. He is spontaneously giving hugs and kisses! I don't know what's happening, but it's wonderful.

I have to take these antibiotics 4 times a day and I can't take them within 2 hours of eating or 1 hour of going to eat. I think these stupid drugs want me to lose weight.

But I don't even care, because omg I'm so grateful. Today I dragged my sick ass to work only because we had a deadline and I had no makeup and experimental hair and jeans and the repulsive raggedy old sneaks that are what I can lace over my two - two! - MAD SEXY ankle braces, and I still felt like cutest I have felt in maybe months. Because that is what not feeling like a disgusting disease-ridden sack of pus will do for you! When you move on up to merely a slightly defeated sack of meat with just disease sprinkled on the top, it's like a million bucks! God, antibiotics, how we're going to miss you.

Also someone seems to have replaced my regularly scheduled Junebug with Junebug: Snugglebug X-Treme version, at least for him. I have gotten hugs! And blown kisses! And Mr. E has gotten kisses hello and goodbye! I don't know what's going on here but I LOVE IT.

And, I got to binge-watch OITNB while I was home sick this week. I haven't seen the season finale of S2 so don't spoil me, but damn. On the one hand, show I love you. On the other, did we really have to have a fake rape storyline? Really? In a women's prison? Why is that…why. Oh my god, I hate that so much. Also, I love Vee as a character so much, and I love watching Lorraine Toussaint just Cersei her way through everything and everyone without so much as pulling her hem off the floor, but I am getting just a little creeped out at the constant tradeoff between Good White Mother Red and Bad Black Mother Vee. But, of course, that is the great thing about having more than one black woman character in a show: she doesn't have to be Black Women, she can just be Vee, because there's also Taystee and Poussey and Cindy and that one Golden Girl and etc.

Also, Red's not that great, so there's that. :D

Last week was a hard week. Traffic gets worse as it gets later, and it takes us longer to get home, so I've arranged my schedule so that I only need to pick the kids up lateish from daycare one day a week. Except that last week, for various reasons, it was four days. So we were getting home late, having a long exhausting commute, eating dinner late, going to bed late, still getting up early. And one late afternoon, having already picked up Rocket and carrying him on my front, and my backpack with all his gear and milk and so on on my back, I was trudging up the stairs on my way to get the Junebug. And I love the Junebug, I do. But I got passed by one of his little classmates' mothers, and I saw little A. beyond the glass doors jumping up and down and waving at her mother, and just for a second, I had this momentary passionate wish that I were on my way to pick up a kid who was going to be happy to see me. Instead of what the Junebug does, which is see me, shriek, and run away, sometimes hiding.

It's not that he doesn't like me - I swear. It's honestly for a very good reason, which is that the last thing of the day is outdoor free play, which he adores, and he loves his daycare, and whenever I pick him up he is busy playing legos or digging sand or playing doggie with his friends or something like that. And I am there to interrupt his game, take him away from his friends, make him use the potty and then make him go commute. So he's not happy to see me.

It's also just his personality, though. He's always been this way. Remember "oh no! Why are all these smooches happening to the baby?" Then we had Rocket, and I was shocked to discover that some babies kiss you back! Rocket loves snuggles and kisses! The Junebug would rather eat a bug! That is just the way he is, and I do a lot of gritting my teeth and remembering that I need to love my kid for who he is, not who I want him to be, and accepting that he expresses affection with headbutts and asking us to pretend to be "stingrazors" with him. (Stingrays. But I must admit that his version is cooler.)

FUCK, though, this week my mom is here, and she is not at all on board with this accepting people for who they are. She thinks the lack of hugs is my fault, because apparently I haven't taught him how to show affection. I.e. I say "You don't have to hug if you don't want to." And I thought that she was coming to spend time with the kids? But she hasn't volunteered to keep either of them home from daycare with her any days, and finally Mr. E and I said why doesn't the Junebug stay with her tomorrow and they can go to the zoo, but this afternoon she was saying that if he doesn't like her anymore (i.e., won't accept hugs) maybe she shouldn't. So, fuck, I don't know. How much of this is her sulking because the Junebug doesn't hug, and how much of this is because we suggested it and there's her thing where she would donate both her kidneys plus her liver to me as long as I don't ask but if I ask for anything then I'm being difficult and she doesn't want to do it.

Fuuuuuuck. Hey, guess what? Rocket has his first sign! Guess what it is?

Yeah, he shakes his head "no". Way to live up to the stereotype, kid. Still. Exciting!

I forgot to mention that my mom was here for a week and the Junebug asked "Why?" so many times that he actually broke her. He actually did. My mom, who could be usefully visualized as some sort of unstoppable grandmother Dalek force going "APPRECIATE. APPRECIATE." about her grandkids, and everything they do is delightful, or at least completely understandable, and any problems or acting up are due to their heartless parents unreasonably demanding that they get up, go to bed, eat, use the potty, catch a train, get in their car seat, put on their shoes, etc...Even my mother finally turned to me and said "You and your brother never asked 'Why?' this much. NEVER." And then she looked kind of haunted and repeated the way the Junebug sing-songs "WhyyYYYyyy?", and shook her head.

I felt somewhat vindicated.