Tag Archives: children

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.

 

Why can’t you see what I’m thinking?

Precision is not a trait easily mastered at age three. My son has a lot of things he’d like to discuss with me, but he sometimes has trouble making me understand just what it is we are discussing. He knows exactly what he’s talking about, and it makes little sense to him why a grown man can’t follow his train of thought.

My son will ask me a question like, “Daddy, what kind of engine was pulling that train?”

Instead of just saying it was a diesel engine, like any sensible father would, I ask, “Which train?”

He’s very willing to supply details: “That one we saw the other time. The one that was on the railroad tracks.” Then, to make absolutely certain that I will know exactly the right one, he’ll add, “The one I’m thinking about.”

“Oh! That one!” I say, finally learning the first thing about becoming sensible. “That was a diesel engine.”

Often he will ask important questions from the back seat while I’m driving. In heavy traffic, he might ask, “Daddy, what kind of car is that?”

Since I never learn, I ask, “Which car?”

“The one I was looking at.”

“It’s a diesel car, son.”

He even points things out with the vaguest of gestures. This is not really his fault though. His mother has always tried to discourage him from pointing, since pointing can be considered to be rude in certain contexts. Instead of using his index finger to point things out, he has been schooled to use an open hand, in the same way that a spiritual guide might show the pathway to Nirvana.

This is either the general direction of path to enlightenment or an invitation to watch a dog peeing on a fire hydrant. It is difficult to tell because neither is exactly in the direction indicated.

The boy looks like one of the apostles whenever he points at something. It tickles me, but it also leaves me wondering to what sight he is attempting to draw my attention. Open hand pointing is an imprecise art form, and its practitioners tend to turn it into a flowing gesture that encompasses up to 180 degrees of the possible horizon.

Whenever my little Holy Man points at something, I am filled with the urge to follow him toward a spiritual awakening, but I am given only a very general idea of where that awakening lies. This would be fine, as I never expected enlightenment to be an easy thing to find. The problem is that he is actually pointing at a funny-looking squirrel across the street, which I will probably also never see.

I don’t care about missing out on entertaining rodents though. My road to happiness will, more or less, be pointed out to me by the sweeping gestures of my children.

My boy wouldn’t make a very good recruiter. People would think that he was pointing at the guy standing next to them. (Artist: James Montgomery Flagg)

Please, please, please, don’t abuse the magic word

“Can I sit in the front seat?”

“No.”

“Can I drive?”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“I said a good word.”

“Yes, you did, and that was very nice of you. I appreciate it. But three-year-olds aren’t allowed to sit in the front seat or drive the car.”

Please is indeed a good word. It is a very polite and useful word. Also, I don’t blame the boy for dreaming big. If he’s going to ask to sit in the front seat, he might as well request to take the wheel.

Well, he did say please.

We all want our kids to learn to use nice words like please and thank you. We want them to know when and how to say excuse me and I’m sorry. Speaking of dreaming big, I have pipe dreams about my son learning to say sentences along these lines: “Daddy, I am truly humbled by the sacrifices you and Mommy have made in the name of my happiness.” (This one might be a long shot.)

Of all the words and phrases we want our kids to learn the habit of using, please is the trickiest. Please is a trap. It baits us into presenting it as the universal door-opener. How often do we hear an adult ask a child for the magic word? I’m sure I’ve made that mistake myself and I regret it.

Please is not a magic word. It is nice word, but it holds no more power than any of the other nice words. It only works when used by a reasonable person, making a reasonable request upon another reasonable person. Please won’t get a little boy into the front seat of the car. It won’t get him behind the wheel. It won’t get him cupcakes for dinner, and it won’t allow him to live in my house until he’s 40. None of these are reasonable requests, and there really are no magic words to make them so.

I don’t know how he got hold of a whole package of cookies. All I can figure is that he must have said pretty please.

My son doesn’t recognize please as a magic word when his parents use it. It is little more than the waste of a syllable when we use it on him in requests like these:

  • “Please eat your dinner.”
  • “Please don’t poke your baby brother to see if he’s asleep.”
  • “Please stop asking if you can drive the car.”

If there is a silver lining in his declining our polite requests it is that maybe he really can understand that getting the things you want in life takes a little more patience and effort than throwing around some magic word. Getting him to finish his dinner certainly does.

I’m trying hard to get away from please as a magic word. Magic is fun, and there is a place for it in a child’s world, but it is no substitute for respect, character, or kindness. To anyone who will show my kids examples of these traits, I say please and thank you.

Put your head on my shoulder, dammit!

Is it unmanly to admit that I’m a touch jealous of the way the baby snuggles up so happily on Mommy’s chest and rests his contented little head on her shoulder? Luckily, I have some wood to split out back, so if an admission like this siphons some of my manliness, I’ll just pick up my splitting maul and go pump it back up to the fill line.

The baby settles in so easily when Mommy holds him close. He looks like he fits the spot perfectly and would rather be nowhere else. Whenever I try to rest his little noggin on my shoulder, he swipes his face from side to side, unable to find a comfy spot for it. He never settles down and eventually becomes so disgusted with the arrangement that he tries to thrust himself off of me like a backstroke swimmer at the start of a race.

The baby seems to have some difficulty with my clavicle. As he fidgets around my shoulder area, you can tell he is wondering to himself, “What’s this raggedy bone doing here? It’s all in my face no matter how I squirm. I can’t rest here. I’m gonna backstroke my way right out of this mess.” Then he kicks off.

“Oh no! Here comes Daddy. I hope he isn’t thinking about trying to hold me on his chest.”

I’ve never considered myself to be the bearer of an overly prominent collar bone. My clavicle seems to protrude no more profoundly than my wife’s does. So why is the baby not bothered by hers? Do mothers have a retractable clavicle that hops out of the way when Baby is near?

“Get those broken glass shoulders of yours away from here, Daddy. I mean it!”

Or maybe my torso is too long. Maybe I need to heft him up higher so he can hook his chin over my collar bone. I wish we had kept the instruction manual so I could look at the diagram and see how to align Chin-A with Clavicle-B. I try to lift him up high so he can find a good spot, but he always acts like my shoulder is as cozy as a pile of rocks.

“Help, Mommy! Don’t let him scrape me on those pricker bushes he’s got growing out of the sides of his neck!”

When he’s snuggled in good on Mommy’s shoulder, his button nose burrowed into her neck, he spreads his contented gaze over the whole world. His baby eyes say to me, “Mommy is so warm and soft,” without needing to finish the comparison they are implying.

At times like this, I am tempted to point my bony finger into his face and say, “Listen you! I know Mommy is warm is soft. I knew that before you were even born. And if I hadn’t discovered how warm and soft Mommy is, you wouldn’t be here. Lucky for you, Mommy doesn’t get all bent out of shape just because I happen to have a clavicle. So put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

“Phew! He’s just taking pictures. Sure, I’ll smile. Keep that bed of nails away from me and I’ll smile all night long.”

I don’t actually say these things. How could I when he is so damned adorable, nestled on Mommy’s shoulder? I could never raise my voice to his happy little face, even telepathically. Besides, is it his fault that I have a mondo-monstrous clavicle that starts arguments by poking innocent bystanders in the eye?

“You’ve got the best shoulders in the world, Mommy. Good enough to eat. You just keep snapping the pictures, Pops.”