Search This Blog

Friday, November 23, 2012

STOP

The casual reader and the smug neurotic mother whose children are now seven and twelve (and therefore possesses a section of her brain that smoldered away long ago in a self-destruct mechanism meant to keep us from eating our young after the age of four, when they are apparently no longer irresistibly cute and we might take out our revenge if the memories of their toddlerhoods were left intact) will read this and immediately refer me in their minds to some parenting website that recommends that you deal with a two-year-old and all of his boundless, joyful energy through the magical magic of redirection.  ''That's a nice picture you're making.  Can we do it in the bathroom so the whole house isn't covered in shit?''  To that person, I say, preemptively: shut the hell up.  Normal people do not possess the creativity required to redirect the endless possibilities that gush forth from the mind of a two-year old (which I note, cannot be discriminated from the mind of a psychopath by a neurologist): I'm smashing this banana into the grate behind the refrigerator!  I'm putting crayons in the dog's nose - why?  There's a hole! I am capable of sustaining a high C at 900 decibels for one full minute and show no signs of oxygen depletion even though all the air has been sucked out of the room!  I'm decorating in between the keys of the piano with cheese that I found under the couch where I stuffed it last week along with milk I poured in a truck! I just found the toilet plunger, and it seems it was recently used! I'm putting all of the clean laundry in the trash! I can redirect between 30-40 of these inbound flights of fancy, but they. just. keep.coming.  And while they come, someone is yelling and pulling my pants down the whole time.  Yes my pants.  So there are just some times, Mr. Baby, when you can't be redirected like an affable pilot on his way into Heathrow.  You need to just. fucking. STOP what you are doing.

Sometimes, this is a matter of safety.  Like when you said you wanted to play in your room, and I took advantage of that time to get on the Internets, and your voice was right behind me saying hi mom, hi mom, hi mom, and it turns out you were on the ledge on the outside of the banister alternating (I must say, with amazing skill for a 24-month-old) your grip while leaning back over the eight-foot drop to the stairs, and from the look on your face your were doing it just to piss me off.  That's a time, good buddy, when you need to FUCKING STOP.  Or when you were ''watching'' me in the kitchen and surreptitiously grabbed all the knives off of the counter and then decided to play ''JUMP.''.  Or when you had two delicate Polish teacups in your hands and were banging them together as they shattered into millions of pieces, and you just kept banging.  Time to STOP.

It's often a matter of your little brother's safety.  Like when you are ''feeding'' him by packing large pieces of banana into his windpipe.  Or when you are ''taking'' him, and the vehicle you are using is overturned his face is being dragged on the floor.  Or when you decide to ''baby-share,'' by tossing Hot Wheels cars at him from across the room.   

Often, more than not, it's about cleanliness. I could go one forever here, about the compost and the flour and the soap and the toilet plunger and the beans and the rice and the books and the magnets and the blocks and the pillows and the blankets and how none of this needs to be vaporized and sprayed all over the place like an aerosol.  Sometimes, there is still hope that fifteen minutes of my day can be salvaged from the endless garbage heap of the rest of my minutes, and not dedicated to the sweeping up or the mopping up or the vacuuming up of whatever you're about to get to work on with that supersonic sweeping hand motion.  And then maybe I can use that time to go to the bathroom.  So... you need to fucking STOP.

It is, sometimes, about noise.  Sometimes someone is about to finish a sentence like, ''whatever you do, don't - '' on the radio. Sesame Street has to come to its inevitable end, and the wailing sound you make is not only useless but actually raises your mother's blood pressure to stroke levels.  Certain words become annoying if they are repeated fifty thousand times in a monotonous voice and for no apparent reason whatsoever.  Check it: truck, truck, truck, do you want it? truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck do you see it?  truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck do you like it? truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck ...annoying.  And I'm just writing here.

And occasionally it's just about being annoying.  Like, I haven't talked to your father in a week.  Not because he wasn't here, but just because somebody kept yelling truck, truck, truck, truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck truck.  Or like, I just don't want somebody kicking me in the face for whatever reason.

But no matter what it's about, Mr. Baby, one thing is for sure.  And that is this: STOP does not mean, keep doing whatever you're doing, but do it faster and more frantically!  STOP!  Please draw even more furiously on the table with that marker!  STOP! Please hit compost container even harder with that mallet so that's it's a thousand times louder when it explodes all over the floor!  STOP! Keep splashing your hands in the baby's poopy diaper and see if you can fling it all over the room, yelling ''Baby poop! Baby poop!''  But faster.  And more furiously.  STOP!  I've been listening to this radio show for half an hour and they're about to tell me the secret to the universe, but please keep yelling, in fact, yell LOUDER so that I never find out what it is.     

Yeah it's just...that's not what stop means.  It means STOP! Stop the madness in the name of all that is holy and sane, for just two fucking minutes.  And give me a second to think about how we can channel your desire to eat crayons while jumping off of the window ledge into something useful and safe, in a positive manner befitting my extraordinary abilities as a mother.