Category Archives: Little Weirdos

From the mouths of babes: new medical terms

One expects a certain amount of nighttime tumult from an infant, but a three-year-old can supply you with a considerable amount of sleep deprivation as well. The difference is that the older child should be able to explain his trouble to you. He should be able to, but he can’t.

Your three-year-old is half asleep when he presents you with his nighttime calamity. He knows he’s out of bed and crying, but he can’t really explain why. He can’t choose words very well in his semi-slumber. Also, he doesn’t have the first clue as to why he is crying.

Yes, he may know that he wants a drink of water. But when it comes down to why he is crying about it, he is just as much in the dark as you are. Maybe it’s that things always seem more dramatic with the lights out. Why do you groan so much more about having to get him a drink at 3 a.m. than at 3 p.m.?

It’s not worth asking him why he’s crying. The only thing he can tell you is that he doesn’t know. But since he is crying, and half asleep, it comes out in that spine-jabbing whine, “I-I-I-I do-o-o-on’t kno-o-o-ow.” Save yourself the cringe and just give the kid his water. You can investigate why it was a life-or-death situation at first light.

There are nights, sad to say, when you must try to communicate with the child. The other night, my son came to ask for water because his mouth hurt. I assumed he meant that his mouth was dry so I helped him get a drink. I was already mentally back in bed, when he started crying and said his mouth still hurt.

I asked him why his mouth hurt. He said he’d hurt it with his spoon when he had eaten some yogurt.

Aside: Imagine the Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan scene where Captain Kirk clenches his fists, looks up, and yells, “Khaaaaaan!” Only, it’s me clenching my fists, looking at the bathroom ceiling, and yelling, “Yooooo-guuuuurt!” Yogurt seems to be on course to become the bane of my existence. That night, the problem yogurt was not the one the boy begged me to buy and then wouldn’t eat, it was the one that both vexes and addicts his mother.

“Yooooo-guuuuurt!” (Paramount Pictures)

“I want you to get it out of my mouth,” he said between sobs.

“Get what out of your mouth?”

“It.”

“Is there something in your mouth that doesn’t belong there?”

“Yes.”

“What is it?”

“The hurt.”

“What do you expect me to do about that?”

“Get it out.”

I got my flashlight. I really just wanted to dump him back into bed, but the delinquent parent headlines were already nagging me:

Yogurt Shard Lodges In Toddler’s Throat After Parent Ignores Child’s Plea

Doctors Forced to Amputate Yogurt Boy’s Uvula

Officials Say Yogurt Tragedy Completely Avoidable

I mean, what if there really were something lodged in his mouth – something that didn’t seem worth mentioning to me when I’d brushed his teeth and put him to bed many hours ago?

I shined my light. His mouth was pink and perfect. Nothing was in there that shouldn’t have been, except a bright light at 3 a.m.

“Can you get it out?” he sobbed.

“There’s nothing in there. What do you want me to get out?”

“Now that I’ve extracted the offending yogurt shard, we can begin to patch up this child’s tonsils. Nurse, bring me my hurt-stain remover.” (Image: James Wallace Pondelicek)

“The hurt-stain.”

I can only assume that hurt-stain is a concept manufactured by a sleepy and distressed preschool consciousness. If you know what it is, please tell me. And then let me know if it should be hyphenated; I like to represent these ideas accurately.

I may not know exactly what a hurt-stain is, but I do know what it means to me. It means it’s time for everybody to get back into bed and sleep off whatever ails them.

The next day, when people at work commented that I looked very tired, I told them I just had a little hurt-stain on my eyelids. They said no more about it.

Lightning Boy, a.k.a. Kid Molasses

Every time I want to sit down for a minute, my son transforms into a loud and demanding body of energy. “Daddy, build a train track for me. Daddy, let’s go ride my bike. Daddy, I need some juice. Daddy, get down on the floor so I can ride you like a horse. Daddy, tell me everything I just asked you. I forgot some of them.”

As soon as I try to sit down for a minute he turns into this blur of unlimited energy. The only way to slow him down now is to ask him to perform a specific task. But that could shut him off altogether.

So why should it be so surprising that every time I need him to do something, he automatically switches into super-slow gear? It’s not surprising. I’ve been at this game long enough to know just what to expect.

Of course, he’s going to drag his feet when asked to do something he doesn’t want to do. Getting ready for bed is the prime example. He crawls up the stairs like a commando – one who has been shot in both legs. He carefully inspects the potty to make sure it is a worthy receptacle for his pee. He unscrews the toothpaste cap as if it were rusted tight from years of disuse. His nightlight, pajamas, pillow, and 18 blankets must be perfectly arranged. This takes a certain amount of dedication, and a larger amount of time.

I don’t begrudge his efforts to put off bedtime. That plan makes perfect sense. What tries my patience is his pokiness in doing things he enjoys. Going to the park is great fun. There are two things he must do before leaving the house. He must go pee and put on his shoes. It has been this way for the balance of his lifetime, and yet . . .

No matter where he is in the house, there are two dozen distractions between him and the potty. His shoes are in the exact same place they were yesterday, and the day before that, but he’ll be damned if he can find them. Getting them onto his feet is the easy part, if you are willing to pretend with him that he doesn’t know which shoe goes on which foot. This, I remind you, is an outing for which he is most eager.

Does he know his shoes are on the wrong feet? Absolutely. Does he care? That depends on whether or not anybody thinks it was clever to have put them on the wrong feet.

Likewise, you might expect him to dance around his plate when served a food he doesn’t like. But why must he restrict himself to three bites per hour of his favorite meals? He only likes to use one prong of his fork at a time. We have to start him early on dinner if we don’t want to leave him sitting alone into the night. The only food he will chew at a normal rate is shrimp tempura, which Daddy cannot afford to supply every time there is something to do after lunch.

It can get tiring, shepherding him through his slow-motion routines. After a while, Daddy needs to sit down. There must be a switch in the cushions of the sofa that turns the boy’s juice back up to full blast. It works every time: “Daddy, you have to chase me. Daddy, let’s play in the sprinkler. Daddy . . .”

Milk it while it’s still cute, kid

In considering the traits the baby is displaying at three months old, I wonder which of them he will carry with him as he grows into a young man. I’m fairly certain that he won’t continue to view every naked moment as an opportunity to pee on whatever or whomever is within range. That could get very socially awkward, and if it doesn’t, I don’t think I want him hanging out with that crowd.

Of all the cute things a baby does, how many of them would still be cute if he did them later in life? The boundaries of cute shift over time, and there are some things that won’t be so cute down the line. That being said, he can cut out the indiscriminate peeing any time now, as that was never cute, in spite of his misguided notions.

This would not be cute in an adult

Our baby loves chewing on hands. I understand babies wanting to suckle on fingers, but he’s moved past digits. He loves to sink his gums into some juicy thumb butt. A little shank of thumb is his favorite, but he’s not above savoring a bit of knuckle or wrist when the mood strikes him. I don’t have meaty hands, but what meat I do have is, apparently, quite delicious.

These are even better dipped in melted butter.

Maybe he would chew on my ankles if I held him with my feet. Perhaps he’d chew on whatever was available, excepting, of course, my gristly, spiny shoulders. But I think he prefers hand meat, because when my hands are not available, he munches his own. His thumb is just not enough. I’m going to start wearing gloves when the teeth come.

This won’t do much for his social life

When he’s happy and engaged, the baby coos adorably. It is one of the most endearing things about him. Yet, the cooing is not going to be so cute when he’s 17. I hope he doesn’t approach the girl he wants to take to Prom and just start giving her the “ooooo, ooooo, ooooo,” treatment. Sure, it’s cute now – it’s so cute that it’s all he needs to say. But that 17-year-old girl is going to want to know when he’s picking her up, and she’s probably not going to have her hair done by ooooo o’clock.

“I’m here to take your daughter to indiscriminately dive-bomb people in the park . . . uh . . . I mean . . . Prom.” (Photo: Gary Kramer/U.S. Fisheries and Wildlife Service)

By the time he is 17, he’s going to need to be more articulate than a pigeon. Of course, I’m sure he will be, under normal circumstances. I just hope he doesn’t panic and resort to babbling random bird noises every time he comes near a pretty girl. My fear is not unfounded; there is some precedent for this kind of behavior in his nuclear family.

Babies change so quickly that I could be writing about different traits in a week. I just hope all of those future traits are contented ones . . . and none of them lead to cannibalism.

Cleanup on aisle two

This has gone beyond the point of coincidence. It’s beginning to feel like a conspiracy.

As soon as I finish making something to eat, one of the boys needs my assistance with a poop event. It doesn’t matter if it’s lunch, dinner, a snack, dessert, whatever. I’ve got my hands all washed up; I’ve got my food, hot and tempting, on the plate; and I’ve got a kid who can’t hold it for 10 minutes.

I use the broad term event because the poop assistance needs of a three-year-old and an infant are very different. The older boy can do most of it by himself, but it really isn’t going to matter until he can do all of it by himself. Until then, a hot lunch will have to always be a dream deferred.

In many ways, the three-year-old’s events are more disruptive to my meal plans. He really only needs me at the very end (unless he forgets his toddler potty seat), which means I’m on call for however long it takes him to speak those three little words that stir every parent’s heart: “Daddy, I’m done!”

Dinner is ready. Now who’s been waiting all day for this moment to go potty?

I really don’t want to start eating, knowing what I am likely to be called away to do halfway through the meal. I could just make him sit there and wait, but that seems like a cruel and unusual form of time out. It’s better to just delay eating, or maybe forget about it altogether.

If Big Brother doesn’t put me on standby, the baby is sure to pick up the slack. He announces his event by starting up his motorcycle. We call it that because it sounds like he’s revving up a Harley when he lets it rip. Big Brother thinks it’s hilarious. I think it means the salad dressing is going to make my lettuce get all soggy before I can taste it.

The baby’s poop events can be dealt with more quickly, unless he decides to enjoy an open-air pee in that free and wild moment between diapers, or he holds something back with which to christen the fresh diaper. Whenever he needs to quake out an aftershock, he always has the courtesy to wait until I’ve washed my hands once more before he hops back onto that motorcycle.

“Uh, excuse me, Daddy. You might want to put your fork down for this one. I’m gonna try to hit the high note here.”

These boys are so reliable in upsetting my meal plans that I begin to think I must be cursed. I’ve tried to comb through my past, searching for any incident that might have resulted in my insulting some sort of boom-boom gypsy. What offensive act might I have committed to inspire the potty time wizard to open up his book and cast spell number two? Did I cut in front of some sorcerer in the line for a porta-potty in my untamed youth? I don’t remember.

If you are out there, offended one who put this hex on me, please accept my humblest apology for whatever my crime, and let me once eat a hot meal with fresh air in my nostrils.