About once a day I have this brief out-of-mother experience where I can see into the future, far into the future, to the days when Graham is walking and talking, to the days when Nicolaus can pronounce the letter L and I realize oh my God I am so screwed. With one child at three years – Nicolaus reminds us that he is three many times a day, as justification for why he should be able to drive, use a real knife, and eat chocolate whenever he wants – and the other almost eight months, they already work in concert to get their way. It’s cute now but holy crap. I calculated how bad it’s going to be in a few years and there’s no other way to look at it: I’m screwed.
It started a couple of weeks ago at bedtime. I had the lights dimmed. The soothing chimes of Beatles Bedtime were blaring on their little CD player. I figure if I turn it up twice as loud, they’ll go to sleep in half the time. If *I* were trapped in a room with no easy escape, I’d fall into unconsciesness just to escape hearing another single second of The Long and Boring Song Winding Road.
So Graham was on the floor, Nicolaus was in his bed. I wanted them both to chill out. But Graham pulled himself up and peeked over the bed rail. Nicolaus popped his head up and said “Gaga!”
The baby squealed with laughter.
Well you know the rule with three year olds, right? Don’t laugh at anything they do unless you want to see them do the same damned thing a thousand times in the next twenty minutes.
So he popped his head up again. “Gaga!”
“Oh man,” said Graham, “that is fucking hilarious when you do that.”
“Gaga!”
“You guys?” I tried, “It’s really bedtime. Come on now…”
“Gaga!”
Graham was laughing with his whole gut now, “Duuuuuuuudehahahahahaaaa you are the funniest thing EVER.”
“GAGA.”
That was the first time I witnessed them work together to so beautifully derail my idea of what should or shouldn’t happen. They’ve done the same basic thing many times since then, either by charming me into a catatonic state or by performing gross acts of total mutiny.
“Stop touching his face”
“But he likes it.”
“Stop it. Leave him alone.”
“But he’s so happy.”
“No, stop it. You’re bothering him.”
(Graham squeals with joy)
Yesterday I stopped Nicolaus from teaching the baby how to play the violin. They were both disappointed, but no, I stood my ground because in the first place, the bow is very pokey and could jab Graham in the eye. Just because we have health insurance now is no reason to start jabbing ourselves in the eyes. And in the second place, I’m finally starting to make some other mom friends and I don’t want to scare them off by being the pretentious mother whose 9 month old plays the motherfucking violin. I’d prefer to wait until at least 18 months, when most babies take up a stringed instrument.
So I stood my ground. Defeated by my awesome parenting, Nicolaus handed him a ukulele and showed him how to pluck the strings, but it wasn’t the same without the big jabby bow. So they abandoned music and moved on to art. Nicolaus dragged out lots of paper and crayons. Graham was delighted and started gleefully shoving everything into his mouth, because that’s his special talent and major ambition in life. I started to intervene but Nicolaus was all over it.
“No Graham,” he carefully pulled it all away, “No eating the art.” He calls art supplies art which pretty much brings him on par with many of the fine art students at The University of North Texas. “Here, this one is okay for you,” He handed the baby a chunky red crayon.
I didn’t want to disappoint Nicolaus by telling him that it would probably be a long time before the baby could sit and really color with him, so I sat and worked on a painting, loosely supervising them while they sat on the floor together.
“Look Mama, he did it!” I looked down and sure enough. By fluke? I don’t know but the page was soon covered with little red markings.
Which you know, yay artbaby.
But now there are little red markings all over the wood floor, every table, my shoes, and the bongo drums. Basically anything Graham could reach. I tried distracting him with something else and slipping the crayon out of his hand, but he held on tight and screeched and said, “Stop trying to inhibit my artistic expression.”
“Yeah!” Nicolaus chimed in, “Mama, stop trying to inhibit his artistic expression.”
Okay not really but the rest is true. Especially the part about me being screwed.
