Everything is rebelling against me this week. Graham is in the process of learning what the word no means, something he delights in hearing over and over. I put him down and surround him with a circle of toys, all scientifically designed to stimulate his senses and later get him into Harvard, even though I don’t know if I’m all that impressed with Harvard after seeing Legally Blonde. But what do you expect for $2.99 at Target? M.I.T.? Graham isn’t impressed either, he twists around onto his stomach and immediately crawls off the rug and makes a beeline for the wires up against the far wall.
Invention idea! A special rug that zaps babies with a mild static electric shock whenever they leave the rug. It wouldn’t be hard, right? They build up a charge while scooting around on the rug. So maybe the key is to make the floor around the rug out of metal.
So he grabs the wires and starts shoving them into his mouth like spaghetti.
“No,” I tell him, “Ah-ah.”
Two things happen whenever we tell him no. First, he stops and looks at us and grins. Second, Mouse runs over to apologize for whatever he was doing that we were saying Ah-ah about.
The house itself is rebelling. I’m fighting it, but the harder I fight it, the harder it pushes back. It’s just like that movie Poltergeist, which I was never allowed to see but I gather from popular culture references to it that the house was trying to kill these people by drowining them in a sea of their own crap. Not sewage, that’s nasty and this isn’t that sort of blog, except for the time I wrote about Nicolaus pooping in the bathtub but I didn’t like describe it in detail because oh gross, I just had to mention it so you would understand what kind of day I was having. There’s no way to describe a day like that without mentioning the poop. Because it was IN THE MOTHERFUCKING BATHTUB. And we only have one bathroom, so sealing the door and ignoring it forever wasn’t an option. I had to clean that shit up.
No, the house is fighting me with stuff. Toys and books and clothes and batteries and wires and dishes and cool little – what the hell IS this? – and by God I’m going to win if it kills me. It is trying to kill me. I am sure of it, there is definitely a malicious force at work here. But I’m not going to give up until this little house is clean and so goddamned cute the motherfucking Care Bears would throw up if they saw it.
Then there’s Nicolaus, who is going through some sort of – well, they have that terrible two’s thing, but he’s three right? And it’s called terrible two’s, so it can’t be that. It’s right there in the name! This is some other sort of terrible random exertion of will.
“Hey, where did you get that? That’s Daddy’s.”
“Oh, I’m just going to crack some nuts.”
“Well please wait a little while before doing that, okay? I really need to supervise you with that, and I can’t right now, I’m feeding Graham -”
“Okay, I’m just taking it in the kitchen.”
“Awesome, thank you.”
Crack!
“Nicolaus?”
Crack!
“Are you cracking nuts?” Stupid question.
Crack! Crack!
“I just asked you to wait. Why are you in there cracking nuts?” Stupider question.
Crack!
“Nic-O-LAUS. Please come in here for a minute.” Graham is watching me while he eats, and I’m pretty sure he’s laughing at me through all of this.
Nicolaus comes in dragging the fancypants nut cracker, “I’m just – oh, me and Mouse just need to eat some NUTS.”
“Look, I know but that nutcracker isn’t really safe for you to use by yourself. Please WAIT. I’ll be done feeding Graham in a few minutes and then we’ll crack nuts. Okay?”
“Sawrry Mama.”
“It’s okay, just please mind me, alright.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks.”
“Are you hungry Mama?”
“Naw.”
“Do you want a nut? I can crack one for you and we can share! Want to see me do it?”
“No, sweetie, I just said – ”
Crack!
“Look, I really NEED you to wait…”
Crack crack crack crack
“I don’t want those shells in the living room, Graham could choke on them and I already ASKED you…”
“I’m just cracking one for you.” Crack!
“Nicolaus, no. You aren’t minding me. STOP CRACKING NUTS. NOW.”
Up until now, he’s been pretty smooth. Cool, composed, never swaying from his linear path towards a life where he can do whatever the fuck he wants. Very Jake and Elwood. But when I remind him that dude, you’re supposed to mind your parents even when that sucks, he loses it. He howls, and oh God he does this horrible screeching thing he learned from another boy at school – we PAY to send him there on purpose you know – and throws an all-out tantrum like a normal kid. It’s freaky.
“That is enough of that.”
“I wannnnnntooooooooocraaaaaacksommmmmmenutsssss!! I NEED TO CRACK MY NUUUUTTTTSSSSSS And Hey!” He’s crying now, “You know what? That’s RUDE. Don’t treat people like that Mama, telling them they can’t crack nuts, that’s not NICE to say that.”
“Well it’s rude to yell at people and it’s very rude not to mind your mama.”
He emits a piercing scream, one that I keep meaning to record and sell as a car alarm that would do quite well I think.
We were at a playdate last week, and all the mothers were talking about who was planning or hoping to have more kids, and everyone was pretty open to the idea except for the mother of the boy who taught Nicolaus the piercing scream. When I asked her if she ever planned to have any more, she turned a little grey and shook her head so immediately, so without a second thought that I’m pretty sure if retroactive abortions were legal she might consider seeking one. Not that she would actually go through with it, because she loves her son very very much because all children are precious miracles, but that scream. You just do not understand this scream.
At his school they use this phrase when kids freak out and scream: “Use your words.” It’s a gentle reminder that screaming sucks and we fucking hate it. “Use your words, Nicolaus,” I remind him, but Nicolaus keeps trying out the scream, even though it never flies, but he keeps trying it because, you see, he really really wanted to crack nuts and he can’t use his words because he doesn’t have the words bitch WHORE in his vocabulary.
What else? Oh my check engine light is on again. And the squirrels keep stealing the birdseed. And it’s four in the morning and the part of my brain that’s responsible for sleep has me awake, doing things like cleaning the kitchen and writing about nut cracking and thinking that actually I’m a little hungry and I wonder if we have any chocolate left over from Easter in there?
See what I mean? Rebelling, everything is rebelling.
