Dear Mr. Baby:
Hey bud. Haven't actually seen you in a while. I know you're out there, though, just like those shadowy, creepy ghost children in Japanese horror films. It's okay. You just learned how to move at the speed of light, and it has you pretty entertained. We've thrown up a few barricades in crucial locations (discovered the ''hard way,'') bubble-wrapped everything else and removed all the knives...so go nuts. By setting out tempting tableaux (rubber duck on the edge of toilet; unattended, open diaper full of squishy poop beneath a white wall; unsupervised containers of toxic materials next to sippy cups; shiny and apparently heavy objects on the edges of counters) and then hanging out, waiting for the sonic boom and snatching at the blurry air, I have been able to trap you with modest success when I need you to decelerate for a pit stop. There will likely be no pictures of you - the LHC people are using that technology to solve the mysteries of the universe right now - from age 12 months to whenever you decide to sit down in front of the TV with a bad haircut and fashionable clothing and complain that we are too bourgeois to understand you, but I'm okay with all of this. Like I said, go nuts. A thing I've discovered about motherhood is that many, many seemingly banal things are sublime merely because they occupy Certainsomeoneelse's frantic attention for three fracking minutes fortheloveofJesus. A few things, however, would be a lot easier if you took it down to Mach 1 for six seconds. Like:
1)Pants change. I know you think you've tried to change your own pants, but what you were doing doesn't really count, inasmuch as it was only 34% of the process. So you may not realize this, but it's hard, my good friend, to remove a substance that you do not want, for olfactpry and hygenic reasons, smeared all over your face, from an object shaped like an octopus and spinning like a North American cake mixer plugged into a European outlet. On crack.
2) Eating. Some things you still don't know how to get into your own mouth, so it's my job to put them in there. It's a lot like that Groundhog-smashy game, but on a smaller scale and forty times as fast and covered in Cream of Wheat. Now, some things you put into your own mouth, but at this speed I don't know what they are, or if you chewed them...so I can't really say how I feel about them. Also, you seem to have a lot more faith in my (as yet uncertified and minimally tested) infant Heimliching abilities than is warranted.
3) The Whole Doctor's Visit. The only thing I can say, and this isn't witty at all, it's just pathetically true in the truest sense of the truth: that was one exasperating experience. Now what? Your chart reads Height: 21-46 inches. Weight: 15-27 pounds. No one has seen inside your ears even once. Maybe you have three teeth, maybe you have five. FYI, it is not actually part of the vaccination process to stab you with a needle five times, and they have these things called band-aids that we can stick on your arm afterward so that you aren't bouncing around the office splattering blood on everything.
4) Everything, just everything related to clothing. Especially, but not limited to, socks and shoes. I've lowered my standards, and if you want to have your legs hanging out and no hat and no mittens, I'm sure you'll sustain less injury than the attempt to put these things on you at this velocity. But this is Canada, and you have to wear shoes. It's due to all the fucking ice, buddy. And some clothes. Just enough to keep Child Services off our back. Remember the time you were wearing your pants on your head and a shoe in your diaper? Do you hear how mommy's voice is cracking, oscillating between vacant, trying-hard-to-be-nice mommy and middle-aged crazy woman who is about to lock herself in a room and not come out for a week?
It's clear that you have inherited a metabolism, from some distant strata of the family tree, that will keep you thin and dangerously mobile and annoy the hell out of your future teachers, and I have resigned myself to the consequences of this genetic doom. I am flowing with the river, because I am Zen. I am rehearsing my responses to principals who will want you to take Ritalin and neighbors whom I will be reimbursing and other people's parents who will be making Helpful Suggestions about how to calm you down because I am Not Zen. I am also building a giant box and I am going to lock them in there with you. I call it BabyDome.
But can you please just stop the squirming, the twisting, the flailing, the arching, the tossing, the turning, the kicking, the convulsions, the seizures, the wiggling, the theatrics, for one. motherlovingminute. during the times listed above in point form? Thank you very much Mr. Baby.
