so tonight’s post was going to be about my first fencing class last night, but i just finished sewing the brown jedi costume, it’s too late to whip up a massive post like that, so tonight, i bring you a quick update on what that little ratshit asshole turdbrain devilspawn toddler of ours has been up to.
like the pubic lice problem he will someday pick up in his transition from boy to man, he picked up an attitude problem in the transition from baby to toddler. i know i’ve mentioned this attitude problem a few times over the last six months or so. if you’re just joining us, this post should give you a pretty good idea of where we are at 19 months of age.
he got two head wounds today – both from trying to get away with some sneaky bullshit.
this afternoon, i heard a sound that has become familiar since he learned second-most-awesome trick this week*: the sound of him belly-slamming the baby gate hard enough to pop it open. in case you were wondering, it sounds something like this: grunt-rattlerattlerattle … grunt-rattlerattlerattle … grunt-rattle-THUMP-oooof!-heh-heh-heh-GAH!pitterpatterpitterpatterpitterpatter…
of course i know where he’s headed: straight for his favorite toy. magnetix! you know, the baby-killing toy made of super-strong magnets that gets recalled every six months or so? that one. we’ve got a couple bajillion of them. in the toy room. where MonkeyBeef isn’t allowed. hence the baby gate. the one he just figured out how to open at will!
so i take off after him. he looks over his shoulder, snarls at me, and runs faster. he dives for the box of magnetix on the far side of the room and starts clicking them together as fast as he can, eyeing my approach. as i reach the side of the table where he stands, he goes utterly still, tracking my progress, and as i reach my hands out to grab him, he suddenly throws himself forward like he’s going to slide into first. i assume his intent was to dive under the table. unfortunately, he suffers from a common ailment of toddlerhood, technically known as a “lack of situational awareness.” anyway, his plan would have worked beautifully and bought him at least another 30 seconds of magnet-building fun were it not for his lack of awareness of the situation at hand – that situation being that his superpowers do not include the ability to pass his massive noggin through a hardwood tabletop. this may or may not have hurt like hell. he screeched bloody murder about it, but not until after i had successfully wrestled the last of the magnetix out of his hands a full minute later.
later today, the boy (now sporting a fat purple bruise over one eyebrow) found the new candy drawer. he discovered the original candy drawer a few months ago. proving he is related to my mother – who suffers under the delusion that circus peanuts are not only fit for consumption by mammals, but also tasty – he loves him some smarties. now, when his fascination with smarties started, he would bring me a roll once a day or so, hand it to me, give me a look full of naked hope, smacking his lips, drooling, and beeping and booping like r2d2 in a desperate attempt to convey his deep feelings about the smarties. if i refused to open it, he’d bitch a little, then promptly forget about it 30 seconds later. if i consented to open it, he would giggle, clap, sit and spend the next 20 minutes happily drooling his way through the package. and then throw the empty wrapper in the garbage! because he’s awesome like that!
but like heroin, he joneses for ever larger quantities ever more frequently. last weekend, i caught him ass-up, feet dangling a few inches off the ground, head buried in the low file drawer in the laundry room that serves as our candy drawer. turns out, he had figured out how to unwrap them himself, and was quietly plowing his way through his 4th package of smarties. so during his nap, i moved the candy to a much higher drawer on the far side of the kitchen.
MonkeyBeef was not amused. when he went to the former candy drawer later that afternoon, he simply stood there for several long, quiet minutes, staring into the empty drawer. then he carefully pulled the drawer out all the way, climbed into it and sat down. and he sat there for a while, contemplatively sucking his thumb. no tantrum, just some silent meditation. eventually, he came to the conclusion that, though he didn’t know what the hell had happened to the candy, he was pretty sure the shit didn’t just grow legs and run off. it had to still be in the house somewhere, right?!?!?!
i’d catch him peering eagerly into drawers in the kitchen periodically over the next few days. and then i’d laugh at him! then, tonight, i turned around from making dinner to find him sitting at my feet, munching on smarties. he grinned at me, and held one up. this could have been a “mommy, i will share with you because i love you soooooooo much!” or it could have been a “that’s right, lady, it was time to GET ME MINE! tadaow, tadaow, how you like me now?” hard telling, since his vocabulary hasn’t quite caught up to his attitude.
so i headed to the new candy drawer. he couldn’t have known that my intent was to tape it shut, but he knew damn well that i was, as usual, up to no good. so he jumped up, pausing only to stuff the last three smarties in his cakehole, and ran for the drawer. and he totally beat me to it! but who got there first was kind of a moot point, since his siuational awareness deficit reared its ugly head again, and he neglected to stop *near* the drawer, instead stopping *on* the drawer. as in, with his *face* on the drawer.
at least his forehead is now symmetrically bruised. the social worker and speech therapist who are showing up to evaluate genius-boy’s “delayed language acquisition” (translation: showing up to evaluate our home for drugs, lead paint chips, coca-cola in baby bottles, and evidence of sober parents) on friday morning should be impressed!
*what, you might be asking, is his most-awesome-trick this week? why, sneaking up behind his brothers who are busily scribbling themselves gift certificates to the bookstore and carefully cutting them down to the size of credit cards, grabbing the paper from the nearest unsuspecting brother, and either crumpling it up, stuffing it in the garbage, ripping it up, or waving it in said brother’s face. i’m waiting for him to just drop trou and pee on it, just to hear daddy cackle.
