Lockdown

About a month ago, my husband started reading this blog with some regularity, and he has begun to comment on it out of the blue, over dinner, or on the phone.

It’s funny, not knowing who’s reading at any given time; I check the Stats page so I know how many people have clicked (5 today!), and I can see that they live somewhere in North America (unsurprising).  I can assume, if I have posted the link on Facebook, that most of them are people I know.  But then there are the Google searchwords.  Random stuff: “eggless jalapeno poppers”; “Memorial Day”; “cry it out.”  And — my cosmic punishment for using the word “boobs” in a post about breastfeeding last year — “boobs hot mommy” and things of that ilk.  A lot of people looking for porn wind up on my blog.  If you are one of them, I’m sorry.  Nothing to see here.  Nothing at all.

Anyway, my husband’s first bit of constructive criticism was to note that it’s high time I changed Babyman’s moniker.  Haven’t you heard?  I’m surprised — he’s been announcing it to everyone — Babyman is FOUR!  He can open the door to the garage “because strong FOUR-year-old boys can do it.”  He can climb to the mommy’s-having-a-heart-attack slide at Yerba Buena Gardens “because you can’t do it when you’re three, but when you’re FOUR you can do it.”  Never mind what Mommy says (for example, “Let’s stick to the lower slides, Babyman!”); the Great Gods of Four have granted Babyman new powers, and he intends to use them.

And so I will take my husband’s editorial advice and, from this moment on, I am re-christening Babyman: LittleMan.  As I said wryly over dinner the other night, it’s only a matter of time before he’s Man, Man.

I have been alone this past week with LittleMan and Babygirl while my husband went East for business.  Watching two small kids for a week by one’s self is, in a word, exhausting.

The main reason for this is NOT my usual source of exhaustion, which is of course LittleMan.  Nope.  Babygirl is the culprit these days.  Little Miss “I’m just going to walk around the house casually for a while, and you don’t mind if I open all the drawers and cupboards and pull everything onto the floor just to distract you from the fact that I found a small screw in one of LittleMan’s battery-powered cars and now I’m sucking on it like it’s hard candy, do you?”

I shocked myself the other day when I exploded with an enraged “In the name of all that is holy, Babygirl, stay the away from the toilet water!”  You see, until this moment, my little angel girl has been, quite simply, the easiest child ever born.  It’s not just me that says that, either.  It’s the truth.  I mean, she cried right after she was born for a while, but then she got home and she slept for six hours at a stretch and she smiled at every opportunity.

No longer.  If LittleMan is FOUR, Babygirl is WALKING and apparently that is pretty much the same thing as being COMPLETELY INDEPENDENT, as far as she’s concerned.  “Babygirl, let’s change your diaper,” I suggest.  Hell, no, Mommy, I am not in the mood! she screams.  “Babygirl, just let me get LittleMan’s snack together and then we’ll sit with your bottle.”  Give me my milk now, woman! she demands.  “Oooh, Babygirl, that’s a little too small/sharp/deadly for you to play with.  Here, take this rubber block instead.”  You wanna see sharp & deadly?  I will claw at your face until you give that back! she responds.

Yesterday, after dropping LittleMan at school, I strapped Babygirl into the stroller and struck out on a long walk.  She protested (of course), and I was chatting with my mom on the phone and she was like “Is that Babygirl crying so loud?  Where are you right now?  What does she need?”

“I don’t know, mom.  But I need her contained for a few minutes before I have a stroke.  So we’re walking.”

“Oh, okay,” she responded with a dry laugh.

And so the weekend looms large and we have a major task on our to-do list: re-install the baby locks on all the drawers and cupboards.  After all, I can’t do anything about LittleMan’s tiny toys and their myriad parts, but at least now I won’t be tripped up by all the Tupperware strewn on the floor.  Focus is everything.  The irony is not lost on me: just as we are finally ready, as a family, to take the toddler lock off LittleMan’s bedroom door (more on that later), we commence a new stage of lockdown.

The cycle continues.

P.S. With my husband gone and no time to look up from the task at hand, I almost forgot about my Eagle’s Nest post for the week: even when crazed, it’s nice to be stylish.  Happy printing.