and by “this,” i mean, “the trajectory of MonkeyBeef’s developing personality.” that rotten-ass kid may have waited the longest to flip the switch from “sweet happy baby” to “terrible twos” (a period which, as near as i can tell, lasts from about age 12-18 months until about age 3), but oh, did he flip it hard.
here’s a list of the things he has done just over the last three weeks or so:
1. he’s started busily rearranging every drawer and shelf he can get his grubbly little hands on. dirty laundry goes in the tupperware cabinet. clean laundry goes on the porch. dvds go on the floor so he can stack his brothers’ markers and crayons on the shelves. his bath toys go in the plastic cups and bowls drawer. and his brothers’ toys go in the garbage! his not-quite-empty milk cups go behind the couch, deep in the tupperware cabinet, in daddy’s shoes or white coat pockets, or anywhere else i won’t find them until they smell.
and these are just the ones i’ve discovered.
2. he wails like i’m beating him, non-stop, with pauses only to draw breath, the entire time he is restrained in either his stroller or a shopping cart. (we already got rid of his high chair a couple of months ago, because between the wailing and repeated escapes, the (risk+cost)/benefit ratio was approaching infinity.) now, this is a normal developmental milestone, and a welcome one, as far as i’m concerned: i think one of the best ways to spot a completely uninteresting kid is find one over the age of 2 sitting quietly in a stroller. i mean, seriously, if you’re a toddler, and you aren’t antsy about all the other things you could be doing instead of sitting on your ass staring blankly at the scenery, there’s just not a whole lot going on upstairs. once they can walk, any kid with even a spark of intelligence and imagination is going to be at least grumpy over being forced to sit and do jack squat for more than a few minutes (the exception being when you have so thoroughly worn their little butts out that they are about to fall asleep, or if they’re really hungry AND you present them with really awesome food, which can buy you up to 20 minutes of peace.)
MB has taken his determination to never be restrained again to new heights. when EvilGremlin was this age, i could alternate letting him walk a bit and then making him ride a bit, interspersed with random grocery-store treats, to get through an hour at the grocery store with minimum fuss. the twits were faster, and there were two of them, but a bag of cheetohs and some very limited walk-time while holding my hands could keep the screeching limited to the checkout lane (where they have to sit still, AND give up their precious orange crack long enough to let the nice lady run it over the price scanner.)
i think i’ve let MB out of the cart exactly twice, and his idea of what needs doing in a grocery store is completely incompatible with mine. i want to get out of there as quickly as possible – preferably with all the food on my list, but that’s a distant second. he feels that his most important task in a grocery store is running at top speed in exactly the wrong direction (no compromises! any attempt to hold his hand makes his butt hit the floor – so he has better leverage as he tries to twist out of my grip, or at least dislocate his shoulder so i feel really bad about trying to hold his hand.) a close second is knocking everything he can reach off the shelves as fast as he can (if you run with your arm out, you’ll find it really only takes a few seconds to clear a few hundred cereal boxes.) so after a couple of times chasing him down, telling him no, and tryig to get him to understand what i wanted him to do (ha! as ifhis lack of understanding was the problem!) i started to put him down on his feet for a third time. before i even let go, he started grunting and twisting out of my grasp, his hand already practicing his back-and-forth cereal-smacking motion as he tried to lunge for the nearest shelf. i tried one last time with the “no, no, NO!” which of course only made him laugh. so instead of letting him go, i scooped him back up and parked his butt back in the cart. the second the seat belt clicked, he started wailing. i pushed the cart… he grabbed my hands and tossed them off the cart handle. i put my hands on the sides of the cart to push it, and he lunged over the sides to angrily smack at my hands, still screeching at the top of his lungs. next, he tried banging his head on the handle, which of course made me put my hands back on the handle to protect his forehead… and the little fucker bit me.
now, don’t think for a SECOND he didn’t know exactly what he was doing, because he actually stopped crying for a moment so he could look me in the eye and see how i liked it. he remained quiet through my yelling in pain, my “no, no, NO!” and my explaining to the twins what he was doing and why… and when i put my hands back on the cart to push it again, he LOST IT. completely. i think he was honestly expecting the bite to win him a ticket out of the cart, and when that didn’t happen, he wanted EVERYONE to know how disappointed he was. it was a classic two-year-old tantrum: back arched, head thrown back, legs kicking, pulling his own hair and beating himself over the head while screeching and sobbing, tears and snot pouring down his face.
i’ve seen it before, and i’m perfectly capable of going about my business without embarassment during a toddler tantrum. he’s too young to pull it together under threat of punishment, and there’s no “take him home and let him calm down” when you’re trying to buy food for the week, so i just let it ride.
for an hour and a half. he didn’t get tired. he didn’t lose any volume. he didn’t slow down. by the end of the trip, the twins were marching dejectedly next to the cart, heads down, hands over their ears. i’m beginning to think that t-shirt that says “mommy drinks because you cry” isn’t supposed to be a joke.
3. in the interest of efficiency, he has whittled his vocabulary down to exactly three “words.” there’s his all-purpose unhappy word, “eeeeee!” this roughly translates to “no,” “ow,” or “fuck all y’all!” then there’s his all-purpose happy word, “m’bwih?” this roughly translates to “please?” “thank you,” or “hey, look what i did!” then there’s “gah!” this has just one meaning: “go.” he says it when he’s running, when he wants his brother to push the grocery cart or stroller faster (see, it’s actually fun when one of his brothers is pushing the wheeled restraint device, because there are exciting things like bumps, speed, fast turns, old people diving out of the way, and the threat of rolling over), and when he throws something down the stairs or out of the grocery cart. oh, and he also says it before he comes down the stairs. again, the model of efficiency: he stands backwards on the top stair and refuses to come down until i am all the way out of his way, at the bottom. then he grins, quits looking over his shoulder, raises all four limbs in a sort of reverse-superman, and luges down on his belly. how he has no rugburn on his fat little belly is beyond me.
but back to his vocabulary triumvirate! the one exception to his 3-word rule is when our neighbor NewfieMama comes by. i try to tell her what a retard this kid is, how he doesn’t talk at all, and he just alternates looking away from her shyly and flashing her his slow, sweet, bitch-magnet grin.
NM: ooooooh, that can’t be true! you can talk, can’t you?
MB: gah!
NM: i like gah!
MB: gah!
NM: but now say mama!
MB: ma!
NM: say mama!
MB: mama!
NM: say dada!
MB: dada!
NM: say susan!
MB: zhoozhoo!
me: no way!
NM: tell mama you can too talk! say mama!
me: you gonna say mama for me?
MB: gah!
me: turd.
4. now, he’s pretty much sticking with three words because he’s much more into non-verbal communication these days. and not the conventional, simple, universally-understandable kind. let me tell you a little bit about how this boy goes about “asking” for food these days. see, it’s pretty normal for an 18-month-old to not be able to say “want milk” or even “milk.” so, if they don’t figure this out on their own, parents can teach them to point at what they want. i’ve been trying to get MonkeyBeef to point at, say, the jug of milk in the refrigerator (since he’s perfectly capable of opening the refrigerator whenever he wants to, say, shake up all the coke zero cans and put them back, because a certain brother told him this was funny) or at the drawer of his sippy cups. yeah. to illustrate how succesful these efforts have been, here’s a “conversation” the boy and i had last week.
i’m cleaning out the dishwasher. he stomps up behind me and smacks me on the ass.
me: what?
MB: eeeee!
me: are you hungry?
MB: eeeee!
i hand him a small peanut butter sandwich and go back to cleaning out the dishwasher. two seconds later, i get another smack on the ass. MonkeyBeef is looking at me with his brow knotted up and his teeth bared, and the sandwich is on the floor at his feet.
MB: eeeee!
me: dude, sandwich. right there.
he looks where i’m pointing, bends over, picks up the sandwich, looks up at me, and then throws it at my feet.
MB: eeeee!
me: don’t want a sandwich, huh?
MB: eeeee!
me: you want some goldfish?
MB: eeeee!
he swats at the bag of goldfish i’m holding out to him and toddles off to the laundry room, where i hear him rummaging in the candy drawer. he returns a moment later with a roll of smarties, which he holds out to me.
MB: m’bwih?
me: no.
MB: eeeee!
i take the smarties, toss them onto the counter out of his reach, and offer him the bag of goldfish again. he grunts and turns his back. i try to hand him his sandwich again, and he makes retching noises and tries to swat it out of my hand. i go back to cleaning out the dishwasher. after a moment, he plants both hands on my butt and starts grunting, pushing me toward the other side of the kitchen like a wheelbarrow.
MB: eeeee!
me: okay… you want these?
i grab what i think he’s trying to direct me toward, the box of reese’s peanut butter puffs on the counter next to the fridge. he watches me quietly while i pull out a handful, obediently reaches out to take them from my hand, pushes them all into his mouth at once, takes a few token chews, then spits them into his hand with theatrical retching, and throws the mess at my feet. he then plants his hands on my hip (also conveniently wiping the mess from his hand onto my skirt) and pushes me again, a little bit to the left, until i’m backed up against the refrigerator.
me: you want milk?
MB: EEEEE!!!
i open the fridge and pull out the gallon of milk to show him.
me: this?
MB: m’bwih?
me: right. it’s called “milk.”
MB: m’bwih?
so as i go to the drawer to get a cup, he sits down and sucks his thumb patiently. i screw on the lid and hand him the cup.
MB: GAH!
and he takes off running to the living room.
me: milk. it’s called “milk.” or “cup.” can you say “cup?”
MB: GAH!
5. here are my initial attempts at taking his official 18-month portrait. not exactly successful. the idea was to get him sitting in front of the pretty flowers, smiling sweetly at the camera. if i tickled the crap out of him, ran back, and snapped the picture, this was the best i could do:
so i tried to capture him as he ran around. but if he was looking at the camera, he wasn’t smiling:
if he was smiling, he wasn’t looking at the camera:
(these are as close as we got to frameworthy. if i can’t do better over the next couple of days, these are going straight to shutterfly for some 8x10s.)
so we relocated a few blocks away in the ped mall. i tried sitting him on a park bench, where he held still only to examine the shadow of the leaves moving in the breeze:
but not to look at the camera. at least, not to smile at the camera. as he clambered down from the bench for about the tenth time, he did look over his shoulder at the camera long enough to say, “eeeee!”
though he did hold still several times, it was to look at a drain cover, the fountains, or his shadow:
and if he wasn’t stopped to look at something other than the camera, it was a whole lot of unphotogenic “GAH!”
again, i came close to frameworthy. once.
after a couple of hours of this, it was time to go grocery shopping before picking the twins up from their summer camp at noon. i was going to try again later for more pictures after his nap, but apparently, the boy has learned how to open his own goddamned bag of chips, thank you very much:
so, rather than takde a picture of the oompa loompa, it was straight to the bathtub, and better luck tomorrow. at least he shared with his brothers:
6. so a few nights (mornings) ago, i was in the kitchen making a couple of our patented 3AM-fuel fried-spam sandwiches (i highly recommend the new hickory-smoked spam on homemade sourdough fried in butter with mayonnaise and lettuce and tomatoes from the backyard!) and PositiveRoleModel asked me how my day was.
me: well, i cleaned up a turd from right where you’re standing.
PRM: awesome! you know diapers fix that problem?
me: right. the boy came waddling past, stopped there, ripped off his diaper, dropped it at my feet, and kept on cruisin. so i ran downstairs to grab a clean diaper, and heard some farting.
PRM: ha-ha.
me: by the time i got to him, he was shaking off the last klingon. and i was pretty much expecting him to pick it up and throw it at me-
PRM: eeeee!
me: right! but i actually see a reason for hope here: he very carefully stepped over the turd on his way to the candy drawer.
PRM: so the fact that he didn’t want to step in his own shit is reason for hope?
me: yeah! i think i can work with that!
PRM: baby, that’s the saddest shit i ever heard.
then he cackled his disturbing, nearly-inimitable cackle.
7. MonkeyBeef’s indian name is “Cackles with Scissors.”*** yep. i said almost inimitable… really, though, the only difference between PRM’s unhinged cackle and MonkeyBeef’s is about three octaves. much to my surprise and dismay, he does it even better than SpazMonkey, who’s had an extra three-and-a-half years of practice. he’s REALLY excited by scissors. hasn’t figured out exactly what to do with them yet, but i think he sees the potential.
8. remember the part where we tossed the high chair? this has led to all kinds of new innovations, like “upside-down plastic bowl air hockey.”
9. he likes to unplug things. not sure why; probably just because it never fails to get him some attention. if he sees a plug, he HAS to go yank it out of the wall. often, when you plug something in, you’ll instantly hear the thump-stomp of him running to undo what you just did. and once he pulls it out, he turns to the nearest adult, holds it up to you, other thumb in his mouth, eyes wide, like being cute will totally make you forget to yell at him.
10. every one of us now instantly recognizes the sound that is “ginormous box of cereal getting held upside-down and shaken.”
yep. two and a half years of toddlerhood to go!
***and don’t go getting all bent out of shape that the boy gets a hold of scissors, asshole. i have 4 kids, and they’re not spending 75% of their waking hours in daycare, and i’ve been a mom for almost 9 years… and i’d bet dollars to donuts my kids have logged fewer injuries than yours. none of mine, for example, have ever broken a bone, fallen down the stairs or dislocated an elbow because nobody was watching, so go attend to your spawn; i’m doing just fine with mine. the boy likes to go digging through the crayons-and-gluesticks drawer, which has half a dozen pair of pattern-cutting safety scissors that couldn’t be used to cut skin or poke out an eye if your life depended on it. so NYEAH!
