girlfiend

Miss N is almost 3 months old. She is less of a squishy, lumpy, newborn and more of an actual baby these days. It is a little bit heartbreaking.

T is speaking more and more. I don’t believe his nutty speech therapist has anything to do with it. I think he’s just ready. He isn’t always clear and with new words it often takes a while to figure out what he’s saying, but he’s talking. Sentences even. He is hilarious and sweet and a holy terror these days. He is exhausting. Not too long ago he asked for a lollipop and I told him no. He pushed his chair over to the door by the basement stairs- we have a little pantry behind the door where I can lock the treats away. He couldn’t figure out the lock on the door and turned to his brother for help. He said, “F, help, please,” only it sounded more like “[F], ep, eese.” Because he had used words and asked so nicely I didn’t stop F from helping.

F is such a big kid now. He is tall and skinny and makes poop jokes that aren’t even slightly amusing. He is funny and charming and smart. He spent the better part of an hour writing the alphabet in the sand on our vacation. He can be sweet and polite without prompting, asking our friends how they have been and thanking me repeatedly for the watering can I bought him because he just really likes it. I want to say more nice things about him, but honestly, he is being a complete asshole today and I’m so blinded by rage that I can’t think of a single thing. But other people like him and have lovely things to say about him. Just not me right now.

A few weeks ago my mother emailed to tell me she was sending movers to my house to pick up my dining room furniture. The furniture was my grandmother’s and was at my mother’s shore house up until a few years ago when she decided the salt air was no good for it and she wanted to take my more casual dining room set and replace it with my grandmother’s. She spent who knows how much money for a guy to move the furniture to my house and swap it for mine. There was no fucking way I was going to let her take it back just because she was pissed off. Okay, that’s not entirely true. I would have said okay just because she is my mother and I don’t know how to respond to any of her insane shit, but B’s immediate “no” response snapped me out of my stupor. Rather than putting anything in writing I called her and told her no, I would be keeping the furniture. She told me we would discuss it further. I haven’t heard anything since. It is strange not talking to her, F tells me that he misses her. This is the week the movers are supposed to come. We changed the locks preemptively.

Aside from the crazy the summer has been relaxing and nice. Well, relaxing except for the children because children are anything but relaxing. We’ve gone to the beach and the mountains the art museum and playgrounds. We’re trying to cram in as much as we can before it’s over.

I made a stir fry for dinner. Bok choy, green onions, sugar snap peas, carrots and steak over rice. F ate two bowls of the veggies and three servings of rice (separately, of course) and T ate three servings of rice and possibly a vegetable and maybe even a bite of steak. Either way I count it as a success.

Little Miss N is four weeks old today. She is suddenly huge. I had to pack away all of the newborn size clothes that she’s outgrown. She has even grown out of the newborn diapers- I had to switch from orange edge to yellow. She’s waking up some and holds up her head and looks around. I hung a few toys from the play mat today and for a moment, after looking through the rest of the box, I wondered if I should get some new baby toys for her to play with. Then I remembered that she is a baby and will most likely shun 90% of age appropriate toys in favor of choking hazards and my cell phone.

I failed my middle child in two ways today:

1. He wanted to use the potty after his bath while I was giving Miss N her bath. He took the potty seat and tried to put it on the toilet but got it backwards. F fixed it for him, but T needed help getting up to sit. By the time I was able to get to him, at least a minute or two after he told me he wanted the potty, he was peeing on the floor next to the toilet.

2. A few minutes later I was getting Miss N into her pajamas. T followed me in the room and sat on the glider/recliner which was in the reclined position. Somehow he managed to get his leg stuck in the chair’s footrest. Really stuck. I tried to get it out, but couldn’t- I’d already broken one child’s leg and was afraid I’d break his too. I had to call for B to come up and get him unstuck. Nothing was broken, but there is a nasty bruise on both the front and back of his leg.

It’s getting easier. I wouldn’t call it easy, but I’m managing. I keep forcing myself to get out of the house and take the boys places so I can prove that I can do it. Not just the easy places like the library or the playground, but hard places like when I took all three out to get the boys haircuts and when we went to the Please Touch Museum and to the zoo. It’s hard, but it’s not as bad as I’d anticipated. The transition from two children to three isn’t nearly as difficult as the transition from one to two. I wouldn’t recommend having three kids so close in age, ages four, two and zero as F likes to tell people, but it’s okay.

It’s been two weeks since we got home from the hospital and I am having a tough time adjusting to three kids.

Like his brother before him, T has decided that napping is for babies. With F it wasn’t that much of a surprise- he was barely napping to begin with. But T was napping for 2-3 hours a day in his crib before this nap strike. Now that he learned to climb out of his crib- the day we got home from the hospital, of course- it’s a lost cause. I put him in his room and he plays quietly for an hour, but he doesn’t sleep then he is tired and cranky. I hope it’s just a strike and he’ll go back to napping, but I fear that this may be permanent and I may lose my mind. He’s only two. He needs a nap.

The Fiendling is doing well since he adores his sister. But he’s been regressing in a lot of ways, telling me he doesn’t know how to put on his clothes or shoes and he’s been speaking this irritating brand of baby talk, either speaking nonsense (WTF is Safa and why does he keep insisting it’s on the dining room table) or adding the long e sound to everything(I want the greenie platey). I am trying to be patient, but I am not. Especially when he takes his goddamn sock off after I put it on him because even though he gave me his left foot, he wanted me to put the right sock on before the left.

The new baby is wonderful. I love newborns and wish I’d known how easy they were when I had the Fiendling. She is sleepy and hungry and has gained more than a pound in two weeks. She is up a pound and a half from her discharge weight. She is starting to wake up a little and act a little fussy, but she’s a newborn, so she’s easily soothed. I wish they were all so easy.

My mother is out of her goddamn mind and we’ve only spoken twice since she stormed out of the house 2 weeks ago. The situation is not good, and it looks as though we won’t be spending much time at the beach this summer. Which sucks for the kids, but is good for my stress level. I will write out the story one of these days, cutting and pasting from emails, but I need a good chunk of time to compose the story because it is lengthy and crazy and infuriating.

It’s tough getting out of the house and it’s tough rounding them up and getting them home. It’s not easy feeding and watering everyone and keeping everyone content. The lack of T’s nap is making it incredibly difficult for me to get things like housework and laundry done. Thank god for my friends who have been delivering meals, because we’d be eating pretzels and nutella for dinner without them. I am tired and I wish I had more time to myself. I am sick of the tantrums and one child starting to cry after another has stopped. Mornings like today, when all children were crying at the same time before nine are morale killers. I just want to get back into bed, but I can’t, because my door doesn’t lock and the kids just follow me in, crying even harder. My sister-in-law, who has been very helpful, said that she didn’t want to bother me by calling because it looks like I have everything under control. I do not. I have very little under control, but I’m trying.

I either have four or five weeks left before B is home from the summer. I hope I can make it.

The Fiendling continues to be awesome. He still has his moments, but since his birthday he’s been quite reasonable.

Yesterday he was helping me unload groceries and he came to the bag that contained my pregnant woman impulse buys- two kinds of ice cream and a box of ice cream sandwiches. His eyes grew wide an he said, delighted, “Mommy you remembered that I really like ice cream sandwiches. And you bought them, even though we still have push pops in the basement! I love you, mommy.”

He really likes to kiss the baby in my belly.

He’s unable to pronounce Rs and Ls in most situations. Though he can pronounce the R at the beginning of the name Rusty, he is unable to pronounce it when it follows another consonant. Today he was singing, “The gween gwass gwows all awound all awound, the gween gwass gwows all awound.” It was adorable.

His vocabulary is surprising. The other day he and the baby were both wearing camouflage pants. I believe that F picked them out for the both of them. He was telling me about some dinosaur who is camouflage. I asked him if he knew what it means to be camouflage. He told me that the dinosaur blends in with his surroundings to protect himself from predators like other dinosaurs who want to eat him. Later that day we were playing outside and we heard some birds chattering. He said, “Mom, the birds are having an observation.” I asked if he meant conversation. He said, “No, observation,” in that teenager-like ‘you are an idiot’ tone of voice. He continued, “They are watching me ride my bike and play baseball.”

The baby is going to be 2 next month. He still seems like such a baby compared to F at the same age. I know that as soon as the new baby is born T will seem so big. But for now, even though he’s losing some of his pudge and getting so much taller, he is still such a baby. Maybe it’s because he’s still not talking much. His vocabulary hovers around 20-25 words and still mainly consists of animal sounds. He’s recently added “bubble” to his repertoire, and though I thought for sure B was making it up when he said he heard it the first time, T did say “love” last night when we were hugging and kissing before I put him in his crib.

T does say any numbers but he practices counting by pointing to his fingers one by one and saying, “More, more, more, more, more.” It’s super cute.

He brings me books to read and DVDs he wants to watch. He loves to play outside with the bikes and the balls and the assorted ugly plastic play equipment that lives in our yard. He adores our neighbor’s daughter and lights up when she comes outside to play. He goes running to see B when he gets home and says woof every time he sees a dog.

The boys are at a great stage right now where they play nicely together, sleep in the same room together, and generally entertain each other. They are difficult, as small children tend to be, but manageable, and if I wasn’t so goddamned pregnant and cranky all of the time I’d enjoy this stage so much more. Soon there is going to be a baby and it’s going to completely screw up the equilibrium. I’m hoping that it will all be fine. That F will keep it together and T won’t lose his shit completely the way F did when T was born. But who knows what’s going to happen. I just know that I want this baby out.

So you know, it has happened. All week long, F has been a relative angel. He’s been sweet and mostly agreeable and there hasn’t been a giant tantrum in days. He’s getting dressed, eating breakfast and going to school without argument and sleeping in his own bed. He’s been giving me hugs and kisses regularly and telling me how much he loves me several times a day. He hasn’t run away from me in public in weeks. Yes, he’s still been working my nerves. He still jumps on (and off of) the furniture and runs in the house and helps himself to handfuls of the chocolate chips I use for baking without permission. He still steals toys from his brother and has to be reminded about acceptable behavior several times a day. He still tests me and is still a pain in the ass. But his behavior has been so much better that the small transgressions, while irritating, aren’t even memorable at the end of the day.

The baby on the other hand? My sweet, darling boy? He has been possessed by the demon that has left F. For the last 3 days, from morning until night, T has been torturing me and his brother. He refuses to eat, he hits and pulls hair with little provocation, he has been throwing everything. The puzzle F is working on? T rips it apart, screaming like a banshee, and throws the pieces down the steps. The cereal he asked for? Dumped on the floor. Anything within reach on a surface? Thrown to the floor or down the steps or both. The eggs that need to come to room temperature before adding to the cake? Smashed on the kitchen floor. My coffee this morning? Spilled everywhere. The entire kitchen floor has been spot cleaned in the past 2 days. His pants? Keep disappearing. He has taken to removing his pants and diaper several times a day. And he’s fast, too. I’ll turn my back for less than a minute and when I turn around he is pantsless.

I just don’t get a break.

F’s birthday is on Monday. Four years ago today, March 5th, was his due date. He is going to be four. Four. How is it even possible? I have to make a Triceratops cake today. The Thomas Era seems to have come to an end thanks to the marketing geniuses behind Dinosaur Train.

I failed to mention in my earlier post that I threw a giant temper tantrum right along with F this morning. After he pushed and pushed and pushed I turned into a raving lunatic, screaming and stamping my feet. I felt badly about my juvenile reaction to his juvenile behavior and decided to take the boys to the children’s museum.

You should know that I hate that place. I used to enjoy it when it was downtown, small and contained. But then they moved into a larger space, a giant, beautiful space, and now I hate it. It is too big. Too much to do in a two hour block. Not enough activities that are actually engaging. I’ve been to children’s museums in other states that manage to teach things through play. Ours has dropped the ball on that. And to make it worse, there is entirely too much corporate sponsorship. Do they really need a play McDon@lds in a museum? Anyway, I hate it there, but the boys love it so I take them anyway. And when it expires this year, as much as the boys love it, I am not renewing the membership.

Anyway, I should have known it was a terrible idea to take him there on an already shitty day. I pulled the car out of the driveway and got T into his seat. F tried to climb into the car but it was too slippery and he needed my help. I helped him into his seat, got his arms into the straps, tightened, and one of the straps came out completely. Not sure how, but it disengaged from the thing on the back of the seat. This meant that I had to take his seat out to fix it. The childless among you may not understand what a pain in the ass it is to mess with a car seat. Even with latch, it’s still an ordeal to loosen the belt that keeps it secure, undo the latch, fix the strap that came undone, put it back together, get the seat back in, and tighten it enough so it’s safe. Especially when it’s 20-some degrees outside, I’m standing in a 2 foot bank of snow, the metal latches are frozen, my fingers are frozen, and both kids are outside with me. I should have given up and brought the kids back inside, postponing the outing for another day, but I soldiered on.

25 minutes later, after a car ride of me explaining the rules and expectations of behavior, especially my expectations of what was going to happen when it was time to leave, we were at the museum. The boys played nicely and I didn’t have too much trouble keeping them both in sight. But then I was helping T down a slide, and in the two seconds I wasn’t watching him F ran to the opposite side of the museum. I had to get the museum staff to locate him. When I caught up with him I didn’t lose my mind or yell. I reiterated the rules about staying close and he remembered our earlier talk about safety and strangers. He apologized and stayed very close, asking to see something else for the next hour.

I gave him plenty of warning as it got close to the time to leave. I told him we we were going to do one more thing, stop in the gift shop so he could look at the trains, get our coats and leave. We went to the arts and crafts room and played for a bit. The boys had a snack. We went to the gift shop. I said it was time to get our coats. And F started to freak. He didn’t want to ride in the stroller so I let him walk across the entrance hall to the coat room. Halfway across F took off running, back into the museum. Wisely, he stopped to see if I was chasing him and I managed to catch him and drag him into the coat room. T was ready to nap and gladly put on his coat. I had to muscle F into his coat, then muscle him into the stroller while he screamed and screamed.

He didn’t want to wear his coat. I told him had to because it was freezing outside. He didn’t want to sit in the stroller. I told him he had to because he’d run off two times and I needed to be sure he was safe. Screaming at the top of his lungs he kicked off his boots. I put them in our bag and pushed him out of the coat room. T was sweet enough to hold my hand and walk beside me. F screamed through the entrance hall and out the door. People stared, probably assuming by the volume of his screams that I was beating him with a fire poker. I pushed him down the long ramp, to the parking lot, his screams growing impossibly louder.

Some asshole parked right on top of my car, meaning I could get T into his seat, but there wasn’t enough room for me to get F or my pregnant self in since I couldn’t open either of the doors wide enough. I got T safely buckled and briefly considered keying the asshole’s car, but didn’t just in case they were having as bad a day as I was. Not knowing what to do with F, who was still kicking and screaming securely strapped in the stroller, I opened the tailgate and threw him in the back of the car along with the stroller.

I climbed in the passenger side door, over the console to the driver’s seat and turned on the car. F, who has had car seat safety drilled into him, started shrieking for me to stop, he didn’t want to sit back there and he needed to be buckled into his seat. He climbed into his seat and I buckled him, which didn’t stop him from screaming the whole ride home. At one point I left Boyfiend a message asking if I could just leave him in the car all afternoon long. Then I took a short video with my phone of the screams which I sent to B, so he could enjoy it along with me. I’m not sure how I managed to restrain myself, but at no point did I yell back. I didn’t even respond. I kept my mouth shut.

Halfway through the 10 minute ride F stopped screaming about going back to the museum and started screaming that he wanted to stay in the car. He screamed I don’t like you. I ignored it, even when he said it again and again. He screamed I don’t love you and I wanted to ignore it, but instead I told him that I loved him, and even when I’m mad and even when he does things he shouldn’t. I will still love him. I will always love him. That may have been more for my benefit than for his. I wanted to, but did not, tell him that I wanted to fucking kill him.

We got home and miraculously, T managed to fall asleep through the screaming. Rather than mess with both of them, I gave F what he wanted and left the car in front of the driveway, locking it, and imagining that passersby would see him screaming in there and call the police to report me for neglect. I brought T in the house, leaving the still screaming Fiendling in the car. T woke up as soon as I put him down, so I changed his diaper and got him a snack before going back to the car to get F who had calmed down sufficiently in the few minutes I was in the house. He’d gotten the top part of his strap unbuckled, but he still can’t finagle the bottom so he was still in his seat. His face was red and tear stained and he was hiccuping. He said, mama, I love you. I asked if he was ready to go in the house with me and he said yes. I collected his socks and hat and mittens and carried him into the house and got him a snack.

T never got his nap. I never got a break. F is still on the verge of a tantrum and I hate myself for taking away TV and computer privileges earlier, but there is no fucking way I’m going to back down on this today, even though I’m losing my mind.

Last night F, who has been in a relatively decent mood the past few days, and I were cuddling in bed for a few minutes before I left him to fall asleep on his own. (Yes, he sleeps in my bed, but there’s no way I’m staying with him until he falls asleep. Why I draw the line I don’t know, but that’s the line, and he can scream all he wants I won’t cross it.) He was a little nutty, flailing and burying himself beneath his warm towel (another quirk. He likes us to warm up a towel for him in front of the fireplace before he gets into bed) and banging his head against the pillows. I told him I was going to leave in two minutes, so he needed to settle down.

He turned to me and said, “Mommy, I like Christmas time. It is my favorite… (he searched for the word here) holiday. And winter is my favorite season because it’s when it is Christmas.”

Just then B came into the room and I told F to tell daddy what he told me. F repeated himself pretty much word for word until he got to the part about winter. He said, “Winter is my favorite season and spring.” B asked him why he liked spring. F said, “I like spring because it’s when the flowers grow.” And then B started to cry a little and my heart exploded all over the bed.

I’m sure that Iris didn’t mean to completely offend me when she referred, in a comment, to the physical and emotional abuse I suffer at the hands of my three year old, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the comment and feel like I should explain.

I am (was, anyway) a teacher. I worked in some of the most poverty stricken neighborhoods in Philadelphia. I taught children who had seen people killed in front of them. I taught children who came to school reeking of pot and alcohol because their homes reeked of pot and alcohol. I had parent teacher conferences with parents who were visibly intoxicated. My first year of teaching, at 21 years old, I had kindergarten students who had been left back with parents that were younger than I was. In other words, I am no stranger to fucked up kids.

My kid is not fucked up. Yes, he is overly emotional right now, partly because of his age and partly because I am pregnant again. He was a wreck after T was born and even though he probably doesn’t remember it, he understands on some level that his little world is about to be completely disrupted again. On top of that he wants to do things that he is not allowed to do. He does not like limits and boundaries, but he has them, and it makes him angry.

If it were up to him he’d watch a combination of Caillou, Barney, and Teletubbies all day long while playing games on PBS Kids. He’d eat nothing but potato chips and sandwich creme cookies washed down with apple juice and lemonade. I’d read him the same two stories 7000 times in a row while ignoring his brother. He would stand naked in front of the television, peeing wherever he wanted. I would clean up the mess. On occasion he would emerge from his television/video game haze to play at the playground. I would push him in the stroller so he wouldn’t get too tired walking. On the way there we’d stop at Dunkin Donuts and Bohema, the local hippie store he loves to browse in. On the way home we’d stop at the bakery for cookies, the first pizza place for chicken fingers and french fries and the second pizza place for pizza. He would mostly likely eat none of the foods he asked me to purchase, because he actually prefers not to eat because he is too busy. We would also go to the zoo and the children’s museum and the playhouse and every other playground he’s ever seen before returning to his den of irritating children’s programming. And I’d buy him Thomas trains. All of them. Battery powered, wooden, Take-along, the whole line and all of the accessories.

His three year old fantasy is not too far off from his three year old reality. He gets to do all of the things he wants in moderation. He doesn’t watch TV or play video games all day, but he gets to play while his brother naps. He doesn’t get to play at the playground for seven hours straight, but on most days, even when I’m freezing my ass off he gets to play for a little while. I let him eat junk food sometimes after he’s eaten a decent lunch and he gets to drink watered down juice on occasion. We go to the places he likes to visit on a pretty regular basis considering how fucking tired I am all of the time. Sometimes I even buy him donuts or cookies on the way home.

He’s got it pretty good, but he’s not spoiled. He loses toys, television and computer privileges when he doesn’t listen. There are still trains in the basement from the last time he hit his brother with a toy. He knows that screaming gets him nothing and that he has to speak nicely if he wants me to do things for him. But knowing that there are consequences doesn’t ensure good behavior. He is three, almost four and he can’t control himself. He’s overtired and hungry many days because he refuses to go to sleep at a regular hour and doesn’t want to eat. The combination of tired and hungry is more than he can take. He just can’t control his behavior sometimes.

Like last night. Yesterday was a pretty good day. We went to story hour at the library then picked out books and movies and played on the library computers. He ate lunch and drank lemonade, watched Barney while I put his brother down for a nap. Then we read the 7 stories we picked out, some of them twice, and built a giant train set on the floor. He got to watch Dinosaur Train while I cleaned up and prepped some things for dinner, then we played with trains together until his brother woke up. He played some games on PBS Kids then had a snack. He said he wasn’t hungry for dinner yet, even though it was ready for him and went to swim lessons at 6. He got home in a good mood. Then he refused to eat his dinner. I made him eat half. He asked for a bagel and refused to eat it once it was ready. That’s where it all went downhill. For the next two hours everything was a battle. Everything. B took over so I could get T to sleep, but T couldn’t sleep through the screams. F refused to pee and refused to eat and only wanted to wear wet pajamas to bed because he doesn’t like dry pajamas any more. 2 bedtime stories wasn’t good enough he needed 3. Then he wanted the bagel he didn’t like because he was hungry and I just wanted him to shut the fuck up so his brother could sleep. By the time he did quieted down so T could sleep and fell asleep himself I was exhausted. Then he had nightmares all night long, whimpering about pajamas and shouting for us to go away and leave him alone. At one point he had his hands on Boyfiend’s face and was shouting at him to stop touching him. B tried to explain that F was touching him, not the other way around, but how do you argue with a kid in the middle of a nightmare? B went upstairs to sleep. And of course F was overtired this morning from screaming and staying up too late and nightmares, and I am overtired from the screaming and being kicked awake all night. And the cycle continues.

He did not want to go to school today. Well, any day really- he just wants to stay home with me and watch Caillou. Today I asked his teacher, Miss P, how he was doing. I told her about his behavior at home and explained that he doesn’t want to go to school any more. She seemed completely surprised. She told me that he always plays nicely, alone, one-on-one, or in groups. She said he never raises his voice and never misbehaves. She said he’s got a sweet personality and gets along with everyone. The assistant teacher said she’s never had to correct him. Ever. He’s just a sweet kid. Miss P told me that her daughter is having the same problems with her three year old. He’s terrible with her, nasty, but at school or with Miss P he’s helpful. He, like F, has taken to throwing fits, refusing to eat, refusing to sleep and running away.

It was a relief to hear my kid is not the only one who acts that way. I mean, I know my kid is not the only one who acts that way. There is an entire book, Your Three-Year-Old: Friend or Enemy, that explains the behavior and says that the parent is their child’s worthiest adversary. They recommend getting a good babysitter. But still, I don’t really see F’s friends act that way, and the kids at his preschool all seem to be able to leave the playground afterwards without throwing shit fits, so it was really good to hear from his teacher, a woman who has been teaching 3 and 4 year olds for 15 years that F is not the only one, and that he’s a great kid at school.

I feel like I’m just babbling. My point is that my kid doesn’t need a referral. He’s a sweetheart (when he’s not acting like an asshole) and this is just a stage. He will grow out of it. At some point the good days will begin to outnumber the bad days again and chances are that I will then be venting about T or the new baby. The Fiendling is a great kid. I just don’t get to see much of the good stuff these days. He reserves it for everyone else because he knows I will still love him even when he acts out.

Our bedtime experiment results have been mixed. T has adjusted nicely to the new room and likes climbing up on the big double bed to read stories before he goes to sleep for bed or nap. He didn’t nap particularly well most of last week, but I think that’s due mostly to his incoming 2 year molars and a slight cold. When I remembered to dose him with Motrin he slept through the night and took his usual 2-3 hour nap.

F isn’t adjusting. After the first night, when he woke up twice and woke me and his brother in the process, he went right back to sleeping in our bed. Right now this isn’t much of a problem. Except for the sideways sleeping. He likes to sleep sideways right beneath the pillows. Head by me, feet by B. Sometimes he switches and I get stuck with the feet. Most nights B moves him so that his head and feet are where they should be, but he doesn’t like sleeping with blankets and kicks himself out.

Early this morning I awoke to little feet kicking me on the legs and back. F was sideways, and angry. I don’t know what kind of dream he was having or what pissed him off, but his kicks, instead of accidental became shoves and he started yelling, “Go away,” and “leave me alone.” B woke up and went to the bathroom. I tried to calm F and turn him around, but he just got more and more angry and so did I. After a minute he seemed fully awake and aware so I told him that if he wanted to stay in our bed he was going to have to stop yelling at me and kicking. I told him I was going to bring him into the other room to sleep on the couch if he didn’t stop. He responded by throwing his water bottle then ripping a pillow out from under my head and throwing it. I lost my temper, picked him up and carried him into the other room where I dumped him on the couch. He got up and tried to run back into my room. I stopped him and put him back on the couch. He got off and tried to escape again. Same thing. By this point, really just a minute or two after he’d woken up in the first place, I was done.

B came out of the bathroom. I gave him the rundown of the previous minute and told him I was done. I went to the bathroom, then ignored the still angry and fighting Fiendling on my way back to bed. A few minutes later B and F got back into bed. I pretended to be asleep. F told B he wanted some water. His water bottle, which I’d collected from the floor was on my bedside table so I handed it to him. He said thank you then gave me a kiss. We all went back to sleep.

F didn’t wake up for the day until 8.30. I thought about waking him earlier but decided I’d rather have a peaceful hour or so with T. When he woke up he yelled for me. I went in to say good morning and sit with him for a few minutes while he adjusted to being awake. I asked if he remembered waking up in the night. He told me no. I reminded him of the events of the night before, glossing over the parts where he kicked me, threw his water, stole my pillow and got forcefully ejected from bed for a few minutes. He didn’t remember any of it.

I don’t know how I’m going to get my bed back before this baby comes. There’s no way I’m going to be able to share a bed with Boyfiend and the Fiendling and nurse a baby on and off all night. Even if I manage to stay awake for each nursing session and put the baby back in the pack n play, it’s still going to be a challenge.

Some (asshole) commenter, joe, wrote that he(she?) was just reading to see how many times I call my kid an asshole. This got me thinking. Is it wrong to express my frustration with my child by calling him an asshole? Should I instead smile sweetly on the internet and use words that aren’t quite so insulting? Out of curiosity, just to see how bad of a mother I am, I did a search for the word on my blog. In the past year (I looked, but there was no incidence of the word asshole when referring to my child before 1/09) I’ve directly called him an asshole two times. I did describe three-year-olds as assholes, so I’ll take a hit and say three times. And I almost entitled a post Asshole when F was potty training and refused to pee in the potty, but I reconsidered and did not. But I’ll count that and say four. Four times too many?

Right now F is clearly going through a rough time emotionally. I would like to be sympathetic, but it’s difficult when he spends the majority of his awake time arguing with me. When he is visibly sad or upset it’s easier to be understanding. But when he’s screaming at me, raising his hand as though to hit me, yelling no at everything I say, hitting his brother, stealing his brother’s toys, peeing on the rug just to spite me, running away from me so that I have to chase him in public places, stomping and screaming, I just want to throttle him, not hold or comfort him. I have not throttled him yet. In my own delicate emotional state I think I should get a medal for that.

So what other words besides asshole can I use? Lets see. He is generally sweet to everyone else, but with the people who live in this house, the people who love him most of all, he is emotional, volatile, argumentative, stubborn, miserable, cranky, fussy, mean, cruel, violent, temperamental, grouchy, grumpy, irrational, illogical, defiant. That’s all I can up with without consulting a thesaurus. Perhaps if other descriptors or adjectives come to mind I’ll update the list. But until then, when I’m frustrated I think it may be easier just to use the word asshole. Unfortunately, if you’re keeping count at home, I don’t think you’ll read it enough to make it a drinking game.