Dear Mr. Baby:
It's not what you think. We have been talking a lot about the potty lately, which you enjoy as a topic of conversation but not a nexus of effort (although you seem very approving of the accomplishments of Bear and Grinchy, who always but always remember to tell me when they have to pee or poo). No, this is about the bathroom, itself, and what it represents. And why Mommy likes it so much. Without you.
It is probably your complicity in its creation that it escapes your notice: the rain of flashing lights and chorus of sound effects and snippets of cheery songs, the balls and blocks careening off the walls, the swishing toys and perpetually swinging baby swing (no matter. how. many. times. you. stop. it.), the hundreds of bright, maniacally-faced animals that could pop up at any moment and scream HELLO, the frenzied reaching and running and stretching to catch whatever it is that is falling or whomever it is that is consuming small mechanical parts or digging shit out of his pants or standing on the arm of the couch with his arms outstretched and a devious grin on his face. Or perhaps you do not mind living in what your father quite aptly dubbed ''the inside of a pinball machine." But some of us, Mr. Baby, are feeling just a little overwhelmed by all the video-gamesque urgency with which minor to moderate emergencies must be attended to at what is, however unlikely it may seem, always the other fucking side of the house. And the racket. The goddam racket.
Enter the bathroom, a place whose charms have perhaps escaped you. Yes, you have a fine appreciation of some things: The paper, quaintly wound about a cardboard tube, which can be spun rapidly so as to cover the floor in waves of luxurious white, and - glorious day! - which can also be turned to a lovely sludge by simply applying water. The tubes, pressed squarely in their soft abdomens, that dispense a minty, blue paste, which can be smeared upon the walls, or the floor, or your face, or even on Fred if he unsuspectingly wanders in there. A round bowl of water that can be made to spin and gurgle, and all the better, in which you can place objects and watch them whirl around, summoning hoards of screaming and frantic people to their rescue. Oh the swirling! The gushing! The splashing! The goop! The cast of exasperated characters! Yes, the bathroom is a fine place for a little chap.
But Mommy does not go to the bathroom for the toilet paper or the toothpaste, as appealing as these treasures are. Not to unroll things or to dump water on the floor or to squeeze conditioner bottles to make fart sounds, not to dismantle the precarious curtain situation nor to use everyone else's toothbrush for both a twisted pantomime of tooth brushing and of cleaning the floor. Mommy does not necessarily even go to the bathroom to use the oft-extolled potty. Mommy goes to the bathroom because the bathroom is drenched in the white noise of running sinks and whirring fans, and because for up to ten minutes, no one can legitimately ask Mommy to leave. Mommy goes to the bathroom just to be in the bathroom. To sit, and close her eyes, and pretend that she does not live in an arcade run by tiny people with no sense of volume nor concept of how annoying it is to do thirty-five loads of laundry a day - even if it is automated - simply because someone learned the words ''wet'' and ''new'' and ''shirt,'' and contrives a situation requiring their use every ten minutes.
It's quite difficult to suspend belief and absorb the magical qualities of the bathroom, if they are being thwarted from the inside or the outside by my excessively cheerful and enthusiastic guide for The New Reality, who rattles the door handle incessantly, turns the lights on and off, and narrates, with a minimalist bent, the minutia of the world outside the door (e.g.: Fred, wet, Fred, wet, Fred, wet, mama, siusiu, mama, siusiu, mama siusiu, no, Fred wet Fred mama siusiu, on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off....)
Please don't worry, good buddy, you can catch me up in ten minutes. I'm coming back.
Because I love you.
And because the window is really too small to climb through.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Thursday, August 2, 2012
On Behalf of New Baby
Dear Mr. Baby:
There is, as you have noticed, a new baby in the house. No, that wasn't the result of the disasterous misreading of some kind of packaging, and no, we didn't realize it would be this fucking loud. It may seem idiotic now (let's have two small humans shitting all over the house so we can't get one other fucking thing done for two years), but it's all part of a brilliant long-term plan. One in which our lives are a living hell for a bit, but thereafter you tots amuse yourselves by lighting fireworks in small enclosures, or charging batteries with everyday metal objects you have around the house, or duct taping each other to the donkeys, or whatever it is boys are into these days, while mommy locks herself in a closet and has a martini. Back to the point: You seem to like him, and I have to say that for your deplorable lack of manners with adults, you are quite sweet to New Baby. He can't talk though, so there are just a few things he might say if he could. Just New Baby talking here, Mr. Baby. No embedded passive-aggressive messages from mommy pawned off in a high-pitched baby voice.
1) When I am crying, everyone can hear me just fine. So, big brother, you don't need to mimic the crying, or actually start crying even louder, or run around the house screaming ''BABY, SAD. Baby, sad. Baby waaa waaa!" (On a related note, it is also unnecessary to announce to the city of Toronto, thirty miles away, PHONE! when the phone rings or BEEP BEEP! when the microwave beeps, because the whole idea, Mr. Baby, of these things making a sound is so that no one else has to.)
2) It's pretty cool that you can identify all of my body parts. But, like mom keeps trying to tell you, it fucking hurts when someone shows where your eye is by sticking their pointer finger into it.
3) Sometimes, bro, I'm trying to take a nap. Just like you, I make a huge. theatrical, fuck-all deal out of sleeping. But then I actually do get sleepy, and go, as the book says, the fuck to sleep. Everyone in the house is really, really, really, really happy at this time. Loud noises are really, really, really bad at this time. So it's not helpful to choose that particular moment to look up from the quiet drawing activity that you were entranced by, so much that people forgot you were lurking about, and shriek "SZHLA! SZHLA! SZHLA! I DID IT!!!!!" while machine-gunning crayons all over the room like a psychopathic, AK-47-wielding Elmo.
4) The people of Fisher Price have determined a speed which, if it is not optimal, is at least a reasonable, for the swing to be swinging. No improvements, however enthusiastically attempted, can be made upon this.
5) Stop stealing my blanket. It is soft, but you've never, ever cared about that and are quite obviously just being a huge dick.
6) Thanks for having my back with the snacks, but for now I do not want to eat any pizza, Leggo sandwiches, or dime soup.
7) If you constantly push my soft skull inward, like a squeaky toy, some people are concerned that I will have a permanent dent in my head.
8) I am not a whiteboard.
9) And I'm told that no one wanted to resort to this kind of Grimmsian chicanery, but to pass on to you that: If you microwave tennis balls while mommy is feeding me, a bean stalk will grow out of your ears.
Sincerely,
New Baby
There is, as you have noticed, a new baby in the house. No, that wasn't the result of the disasterous misreading of some kind of packaging, and no, we didn't realize it would be this fucking loud. It may seem idiotic now (let's have two small humans shitting all over the house so we can't get one other fucking thing done for two years), but it's all part of a brilliant long-term plan. One in which our lives are a living hell for a bit, but thereafter you tots amuse yourselves by lighting fireworks in small enclosures, or charging batteries with everyday metal objects you have around the house, or duct taping each other to the donkeys, or whatever it is boys are into these days, while mommy locks herself in a closet and has a martini. Back to the point: You seem to like him, and I have to say that for your deplorable lack of manners with adults, you are quite sweet to New Baby. He can't talk though, so there are just a few things he might say if he could. Just New Baby talking here, Mr. Baby. No embedded passive-aggressive messages from mommy pawned off in a high-pitched baby voice.
1) When I am crying, everyone can hear me just fine. So, big brother, you don't need to mimic the crying, or actually start crying even louder, or run around the house screaming ''BABY, SAD. Baby, sad. Baby waaa waaa!" (On a related note, it is also unnecessary to announce to the city of Toronto, thirty miles away, PHONE! when the phone rings or BEEP BEEP! when the microwave beeps, because the whole idea, Mr. Baby, of these things making a sound is so that no one else has to.)
2) It's pretty cool that you can identify all of my body parts. But, like mom keeps trying to tell you, it fucking hurts when someone shows where your eye is by sticking their pointer finger into it.
3) Sometimes, bro, I'm trying to take a nap. Just like you, I make a huge. theatrical, fuck-all deal out of sleeping. But then I actually do get sleepy, and go, as the book says, the fuck to sleep. Everyone in the house is really, really, really, really happy at this time. Loud noises are really, really, really bad at this time. So it's not helpful to choose that particular moment to look up from the quiet drawing activity that you were entranced by, so much that people forgot you were lurking about, and shriek "SZHLA! SZHLA! SZHLA! I DID IT!!!!!" while machine-gunning crayons all over the room like a psychopathic, AK-47-wielding Elmo.
4) The people of Fisher Price have determined a speed which, if it is not optimal, is at least a reasonable, for the swing to be swinging. No improvements, however enthusiastically attempted, can be made upon this.
5) Stop stealing my blanket. It is soft, but you've never, ever cared about that and are quite obviously just being a huge dick.
6) Thanks for having my back with the snacks, but for now I do not want to eat any pizza, Leggo sandwiches, or dime soup.
7) If you constantly push my soft skull inward, like a squeaky toy, some people are concerned that I will have a permanent dent in my head.
8) I am not a whiteboard.
9) And I'm told that no one wanted to resort to this kind of Grimmsian chicanery, but to pass on to you that: If you microwave tennis balls while mommy is feeding me, a bean stalk will grow out of your ears.
Sincerely,
New Baby
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