i was just commenting to ialsohaveadream**, as trogdor alternately bit my leg and banged his head mercilessly on the table leg to prove he was really, REALLY pissed at me, that toddlerhood might be a loooooooong row to hoe with this one, when my friend biblethumpstress* re-forwarded me an email from when then twits were 17 months old. all i can say is… there’s only one of trogdor, so it’s going to be okay, right? i mean, RIGHT?!?!?!?
From: “Bible Thumpstress” ***
To: “Welfare Loser”
Sent: Monday, January 14, 2008 5:42 PM
Subject: Re: i hate toddlers…
By the way, I was just cleaning out my inbox and this is the funniest thing ever. you should really get paid for this!
>
— Welfare Loser wrote:
>
this is just one day’s worth of why…
>>
so today spazmonkey decided that the appropriate response to me telling him no! is to head-butt me. and the little fucker holds a grudge, too… he’ll head-butt me a few times, i’ll move out of the way, he’ll stand there and smile winningly until i’m lulled into complacency and come back down to play again, and the second i’m close enough, the smile disappears, he’s growling like a pissed-off junkyard dog and WHAM! i’m seeing stars because apparently his skull is waaay harder than mine.
>>
the twins have started demanding that all meals come with spoons, which is fine for the first few bites, but then they get used to fling food, to hit each other, to reach things on the countertops (no, my kids haven’t sat in high chairs since 11 months of age, at which point anything restraining free movement became an instrument of evil) … then one steals the other’s spoon, the other one steals both spoons back, at which point they’re screaming and choking each other. (whoever said that identical twins are more cooperative than fraternal twins must have been talking about girls.) instead of making any attempt at instilling a sense of fair-play in a couple of pre-verbal dickheads, i get out two more spoons so they each have two… at which point the jedi lightsaber wars begin. i’m waiting for the day i have to take a kid to the emergency room to get a gerber safety spoon removed from his ear. anyway, today’s foodfest started with a bowl of ravioli and two spoons, and ended five minutes later with tomato sauce fingerpainting on the fridge, a bowl-kicking contest (i don’t know who won, but the walls lost) and everyone pissed off at me when i took the spoons away.
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so they haven’t bothered much with the whole talking thing… their vocabulary consists entirely of no (“na-na!”), uh-oh, dog (“daaaaaaooowwww”) (which includes everything from penguins to fish), ball (“baaaaaaaoooooow”) and up. they’re diversifying a bit, too, spazmonkey can say cow, dramaqueen can say down… spazmonkey called a cup a ball today. i said no, it’s a cup. he shakes his head and says “baaaaoooowwww!” i say, “no, cup!” he screams “BAAAAAOOOOOWWWWWW!” and proceeds to cold-cock me with the damned cup. and then head-butts me for good measure. while evilgremlin helpfully explains that i shouldn’t piss them off so much. (i really don’t know which is worse, the kids that can’t talk at all or the one that can’t shut up for his own safety…)
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so the final straw today was trying to have an argument with a pissed-off 17-month-old about the wisdom of riding a baby scooter off the edge of the porch. apparently, i’m stupid and it’s a perfectly good idea… i guess nobody remembers yesterday when evilgremlin rode it backwards off the porch and came up crying… as i took him inside to comfort him, apparently that was the perfect opportunity for dramaqueen to grab it and do the exact same thing less than 60 seconds later… i guess spazmonkey was pissed that he hadn’t gotten a chance to try it, because that was who i had to wrestle the goddamned thing away from today. so, i drag the kids inside. spazmonkey is pissed. and telling me about it. he has screams that you wouldn’t believe. (when he gets shots at the doctor, people come running from other wings of the building to see who has released the nazgul. i’ve actually heard more than one nurse yell “holy shit!” because the noise is so un-babylike, inhuman and utterly terrifying.)
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now is probably the time to mention that, if spazmonkey is the rottenest little spaz on the planet, dramaqueen is the biggest wuss on the planet. he gets scared and cries at sock puppet shows, dogs barking, and friendly games of peekaboo. i’m not exaggerating. so, spazmonkey’s unholy yowling – even though it happens several times a day and he ought to be used to it by now – has scared the poop out of dramaqueen and made him cry. spazmonkey, offended by dramaqueen’s offense, grabs the heaviest thing he can find (full can of diet coke) and proceeds to try to bash dramaqueen in the face with it. i manage to grab the coke can just before he makes contact, which pisses spazmonkey off so badly that he starts shaking his head, gnashing his teeth, and grabbing for something to bite. i’ve been bitten before, see it coming, and dodge out of the way… pull dramaqueen out of the way… but spazmonkey is so pissed and so hell-bent on biting something that, if the only thing he can get a hold of is his own leg, by god, that’s what’s getting bit… and as he’s crying about the big red bite mark on his leg that has to hurt like hell, he’s giving me an accusing look, because of course it’s my fault… so at this point, evilgremlin – who generally tries to help them do whatever stupid dangerous stuff they want, wonders aloud why i’m stopping them from having fun, and thinks anything they do is funny – says that they’re hurting his ears and he’s going to go play nintendo now. i wish i could do that. “you guys suck… i’m going to go play podracer.”
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thank christ they’re in bed now. if i ever complained about evilgremlin being a knot-headed toddler, o lord do i apologize. he was an angel.
>>
>> *—*—* Loser Brewing Company *—*—*—*
>> Founder and CEO: PositiveRoleModel
>> Vice President: WelfareLoser
>> Systems Engineer: EvilGremlin
>> Quality Control: SpazMonkey & DramaQueen
>> *—*—*—*—*—* —*—*—*—*—*—*—*
*okay, she’s not a bible-thumper, per se, but she did actually get to edit the bible once at her totally awesome job. that had to be alluded to in her name.
**if you, like my husband, think ialsohaveadream is an odd and incomprehensible name, you should take a look at the onion article that he found so funny he had to use it as shorthand for his whole sense of humor, and all shall be made clear.
***emails are as fake as the names around here, to protect the innocent. fuck you, evil spam lords!
