I’m a soccer Mom. I keep expecting a minivan to come screaming down our block, its stereo’s bass thumping out a Celine Dion ballad, carrying a troupe of sensibly-shod Moms who kidnap and haze me during a crazy night fueled by high-waisted, tapered jeans, bad rom-coms, and a bottomless glass of white zinfandel! WOOT!
(Much love and admiration to Bill for continuing to unwaveringly document our life, from behind a gaggle of lenses and straps, despite my clucking and occasional eye-rolling. You were right. I will thank-you one day for these. Thank-you.)
Liam has always freaked me out a little. I think most of that feeling stemmed from him being our first baby and us not knowing exactly what to expect…us not knowing at all what to expect. You know in general. Generally, there will be dirty diapers and cracked nipples. Generally, there will be cooing and 4:00 a.m. feedings that leave you clawing for the magical, reanimating coffee pot at 7:00 a.m. Generally, you will feel a crushing love for this wrinkly little person who just kicked the leg out from under the card table holding your half-done, jigsaw puzzle life. But, when it came to specific milestones, every article or book I ever read ended with the equivalent of a condescending pat on the head. ”Don’t worry, anxious, obsessive Mommy! All children develop and learn differently and at their own speed!” Also, true, yet not particularly helpful or comforting. Especially when you’re watching your non-walking 18-month-old from under knitted brow on tilted head tell you the letters of the alphabet and the sound each makes.
When Liam turned 18 months old, he had only been walking for two weeks. Prior to that, he would scoot himself around on the floor sideways in a half crawl, half monkey-knuckle-walk. We called it crabbing. Proper motivation for walking erect arrived in the form of baby-Nate when Liam was 17 1/2 months old. He decided he’d better bring it if he was going to properly battle the new guy. The first time Liam strung together multiple footfalls was in my hospital recovery room when Bill brought him to meet his baby brother. I excused myself to pee for the 30th time that day, and Liam chose that moment to take ten steps across the antiseptic floor. I heard the muffled cheers from my cousin, Jessica, and Bill through the bathroom door.
The potty-training milestone also vexed us. Liam started preschool at the end of October 2008, a few days after his fourth birthday, because we were still trying to get him to consistently use the potty. I know. At the parent-teacher conference a few months later, his teacher laughed and remarked that he had an amazing memory. She had been making up a song one day about the stages of life of a butterfly. When she taught it to the class in the following weeks, she inadvertantly skipped a part. Liam rocketed his little hand up. ”You forgot the part about the chrysalis, Mrs. Dent!” And then he regurgitated the two-week old line from the song that he had heard once in passing.
And then, he was reading. Not because we consciously taught him to read, but just because he could. We’d be playing Xbox and he’d casually ask, “Why does that say ’press A to continue’?”. “Can you read that, buddy!?” We weren’t sure if he was memorizing or actually reading. He’d laugh and refuse to throw us any more word crumbs until he was good and ready. His Pre-K teacher in 2009 sent home with him classroom books that had interested him in school. She attached pink post-it note explanations like, ”Liam spent all of his free time reading these today. I thought he might want to borrow them.”
When a thank-you card came in the mail from that same teacher at the end of the year, I told Liam it was addressed to him, so he should read it. And, he did. All except the word, ‘Delphinium.’ He resisted reading the card for me on video because he stumbled over that one word and he didn’t want his mistake to be recorded. He made me remind him what the word was so that he could read ALL of the words.
Liam’s first day of kindergarten is tomorrow. And, none of this was to blarg, blarg, blarg, my-child-is-so-special blarg!!! Liam certainly isn’t the first kid in the world to enter kindergarten reading. But, I do think he’s a bit ahead of the curve. While I’m wildly proud of him, he also worries me. I’m worried because his teachers might not see it and he might get bored. I’m worried because, in his kindergarten orientation pack, the summer activities they asked us to focus on were learning the numbers from one to ten and recognizing the difference between upper case and lower case letters. I’m worried that he’s going to think it’s MUCH more challenging and fun to find ways to piss off his teacher and torture his classmates.
My worry is diluted by the fact that Liam is not worried at all! Our anxious, high-strung little boy is very ‘meh’ and seems bored by all the hoo-ha surrounding kindergarten. I would prefer to see a little more enthusiasm, but I’ll take cool detachment over debilitating fear any day. It occurs to me only now, though, that what I might be reading as ‘meh,’ ‘bored,’ and ‘detached’ is actually confidence. He might be further ahead of the curve than I thought.
We’ll be sure to follow up with pictures and reports of the first day, especially given that this is such a big milestone and we have our own personal Dadarazzi to document it for us.
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I’m drying off from my weekly shower. The big boys are still quietly conquering Xbox Lego Batman in the TV room, and Sam has stayed put in the toy room, per my implicit instructions. I can hear him talking to himself, making vrooooming engine noises and psshhhhhhhhhhh crashing noises as he creates magnificent wrecks on the sunny carpet.
I pad into our bedroom, dress, sit at my vanity, and begin sectioning my hair to dry it. I hear the metal of the baby gate strain and click against its frame as Sam presses himself, belly first, into it.
“Muuuuuuuuum-Muuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuum!”
“Hey Sam!”
“I haf-ta poop!”
“Awesome! Let’s get to the potty!”
I jump up and prepare to give him a lights-n-sirens escort to the bathroom.
I thought Sam was going to be our gifted and talented student when it came to potty-training, but what began as a strong, promising stream of a start a year ago, has morphed into a big bait-n-switch joke. If Sam is wearing anything on his lower body, he treats it like a diaper. It makes no difference if that thing is absorbent or not…meant to hold human waste, or not. He is just as happy to make a poop sling out of his big-boy underpants as he is his Pull-Ups, as he is his diaper. I’ve gone so far as to run some baby PSYOPS, trying to make him empathize with Woody and Buzz, who have the unfortunate housing assignment on the back of Sam’s underpants. Oh, how SAD Woody and Buzz would be if you peed or pooped on them! Poor Woody and Buzz! Sam cares not a lick for the comfort or sanitary state of Woody and Buzz.
However, if we leave him pantsless, that seems to serve as an effective cue to use the potty when he has to go. It’s not very practical for anywhere but in the house and it’s a bit awkward if he runs to the door and gives the UPS dude the glass-pressed weenie treatment, but it’s the best we have right now.
When I reach Sam at the gate, there is no urgency about him. No pigeon-toed dancing around…no hand cupped behind his bum. And the devil is looking at me through his crystal blue eyes.
“I have a poop,” he repeats.
“You HAVE a poop or you HAVE TO poop?” I ask for clarification, because, big difference. Absent is the trademark Michelin-plant-ablaze smell that accompanies Sam’s offerings, so I’m not worried.
He holds out his hand to me and I can see a plastic, toy hamburger that came with a play food set that the boys got for Christmas one year peeking out from between his fingers. I play along.
“Oh! Is that your poop?” I hold out my hand. He grins, pleased that I’m playing with him, and dumps the hamburger into my palm. And the plastic hamburger is unnaturally warm. And sticky. And round instead of flat. And HOLY GOD!
I cannot convey in words how strong the human reflex is to get rid of a handful of warm feces. Somehow, I don’t scream or drop it or throw it or throw up. I grab Sam’s non-shitted-up hand with my non-shitted-up hand and drag him, lights-n-sirens, to the bathroom.
“DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING!!! JESUS, SAM!!!”
We scrub our hands until they are shiny-pink and soft, me hunched over him from behind at the sink, controlling his hands like a puppeteer with OCD who just found her little marionette showering in a truck-stop urinal. Him, looking up at me, nodding solemnly as I describe the evils of playing with poo.
Then, I put a diaper on Sam and put him back in the toy room…and I take another shower.
1. No, Mel Gibson is a casino’s big lemon.
2. Straw? No, too stupid a fad. I put soot on warts.
3. Reviled did I live, said I, as evil I did deliver.
This year, I took the boys out, and let them shop for their own Mother’s Day presents for Jill. This resulted in her receiving the following:
Yesterday, I noticed the late afternoon light falling across our opened front door in a particularly appealing way, so I quickly went to get my camera and tripod. I set up the shot, adjusted the camera, and snapped a series of pictures of the empty doorway. But when I look at this one, I swear there is what appears to be a little boy standing behind the beveled glass.
I think I’ll ask Sam. He was right beside me as I was setting up the camera. In fact, he insisted on looking through the viewfinder at least twice, and at one point, he even went around to the front of the camera and pressed his cheek and eye against the lens. He was also playing with the tripod some.
Maybe he saw something.
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