The Indignities of Being a Toddler

I think one of the really interesting things about having a kid is that sometimes I find myself having mini-flashbacks to my own childhood. It's always something small that does it. Caitlyn will do something ridiculous and I'll find myself remembering when I would do that as a child. And wondering why children are so utterly fucking spastic.

There are a few things I've noticed recently that cause Caitlyn great pain. These are things that I do as an adult too, simple, everyday things. Things that I do not fear. That are not even remotely painful. And yet, somehow, my toddler finds them absolutely traumatic to the point of running away when I even suggest that they may happen.

At first I couldn't understand it, but when I really thought about it, I can remember these exact things being horrible as a kid. Daily things I had to survive, despite the pain and indignity of the tasks. And when I think of them now, I can't help but realize that maybe my childhood wasn't quite as hard as I imagined it to be.

Are you ready for this? The list of the things Caitlyn finds to be physically and emotionally torturous? Let's get into it then:

Pooping: Do you remember when pooping was difficult? When it hurt to push out your poops? I guess as an adult my butthole is regulation sized now, so I can't understand it anymore. But for Caitlyn? She hates to poop. She whines and complains that her butt hurts. I regularly find her hiding in a corner, crapping her pants, because pooping on the toilet is simply an indignity she refuses to suffer.

Shampoo Eyes: You guys? Why the fuck won't she just close her eyes when I rinse shampoo out of her hair? I've tried to explain it to her so many times- your eyes WON'T FUCKING HURT IF YOU JUST CLOSE THEM, but she seems rather convinced that if she does close her eyes, I'm just going to splash her face with acid or something. I mean, that's basically the equivalent of rinsing shampoo out of her hair anyway, right?

Getting Stuck in Shirts: Every time I put a shirt on Caitlyn, she freaks out for 10 seconds while I try to thread her giant lightbulb head through the neck hole. I can't help but remember the panic I would go into as a kid when my head would get stuck in a shirt. I was always pretty sure I was about to suffocate at any moment, even though I was never stuck for more than 5 seconds. Also, it occurs to me that this many not be a thing that normal people deal with. The giant head thing runs in my family.

Hair Brushing: There is no indignity Caitlyn is less inclined to suffer through than having her hair brushed. There is running away, and crying, and repeated declarations that she doesn't want to brush her hair. And that's just when she SEES the brush. Once I actually sit her down and try to do it? Sobbing, squirming, and begging me to stop. So fucking dramatic about the hair brushing. Just as I was as a kid.

In summation, kids are fucking weirdos, and extremely dramatic. God, that is a shitty closing sentence.

Hop on Pop

Caitlyn has a bit of a reputation for having the attention span of a marble (or maybe I just have the patience of a bad mom?). She also has a tendency to tune me out. Or it's probably more accurate to say she actively ignores me. I can say her name 15 times and get no response, but if I say the word "cookie" she's suddenly completely aware that she is being spoken to.

It made it hard to teach her things, but I was never particularly concerned. I spent a little time obsessing about it a few months before she turned one, but that was mostly because my niece, who is the same age, was so far advanced and so focused on absorbing absolutely everything around her, that it made me a little paranoid that Caitlyn was behind. She wasn't. Mostly I like to remind myself that every kid is different, and that my kid excels at physical things more so than a lot of kids her age because that is the kind of shit she wants to do, and when she wants to do something, she is absolutely capable of it.

Anyway, now that she has mastered the skills that are really important to her- you know, things like hanging on monkey bars and climbing rock walls at the playground and jumping off the coffee table and doing the Fresh Beat Band dances- she is much more inclined to sit still and pay attention when I'm trying to teach her something. Not that I need to teach her much. My babysitter is like the asshole-toddler whisperer and is fantastic at engaging her in ways I would never even think of. Still, I like to occasionally, you know, teach her shit.

Caitlyn has never had the patience for books. Where as my niece and nephew could quietly sit while being read to (even if not for a whole book- at least a few pages!) at a year or 18 months, Caitlyn decided at an early age that the purpose of books was to cut her teeth on the bindings. And you sort of expect that at a certain age. You expect that, at a year or so old, they may find a book on the floor or in their toy box and their immediate response is to put it in their mouth. I'm not even talking about that. I'm talking about every binding of every book she owns (and our babysitter owns!) being ripped out with her teeth. I'm talking about finding her chewing on cardboard at least once a day. I'm talking about hiding books from her because I knew she would only destroy them.

Finally, though, Caitlyn is interested in the story. She will bring me a book and ask me to read it to her. Whenever I tried to read a book to her in the past, it was met with screeching, squirming and ripping. It's so nice to be able to tell her the story inside the book. I love reading Dr. Seuss to her. I love that she follows along and throws out lines from the book when I prompt her. I love that, when I turn a page, she inevitably turns it back so she can enjoy her favorites parts of the story just a little longer.

Caitlyn's go-to bedtime story right now is Hop on Pop. Reading it with her is awesome and hilarious, because she ad-libs throughout the book. There's an orange dog that is on a lot of pages. He isn't necessarily part of the story on that page, but he's there. Absolutely every time she sees him, she points to him and says "ornage puppy" (and no, that wasn't a typo. She calls it ornage). It doesn't matter what else is happening on that page, she loves that damn ornage puppy. When we get to the page where Mr. Brown and Mr. Black are having a snack, she tells me they are eating sandwiches and drinking milk. She counts the apples and bananas. When we get to the actual "hop on pop" page, she notes that "Daddy is mad", because the pop looks pretty pissed at those two kids jumping on him (I'd venture a guess here and say they fucked his back up. I'm fairly sure of this because my own dad blames me for his back problems. From that time I jumped on his back. When I was 5).

My favorite part though, is the "father, mother, sister, brother" page. That is on the left page. On the right page shows another boy, a baby, with the words "that one is my other brother". For some reason, Caitlyn hates the other brother. She covers him up with her hand and tells me "I don't like another brother" and "no baby!". He's on the following page too, and she covers him then too. I asked her why she doesn't like the baby and she simply tells me "I like THIS one" and points to the other little boy. It's so arbitrary and hilarious. It makes me giggle every night. It also makes me feel a little less guilty about this whole I probably won't be able to give her a sibling thing.

Just in general, I'm finding Caitlyn is more structured and receptive to discipline, too. I think a big part of it is that we are falling into our own routines and not having anyone (coughherdumbdadcough) throw a monkey wrench into it by wanting to do things another way.

Also, seriously, she is fucking hilarious. Her comic timing is genius. Last night, she asked me to put something on TV for her. When I didn't immediately respond, she looked at me, completely straight-faced and said "come on, son". I was sure I misheard her, so I asked her what she had said and she said it again. She also cheerily told me that she had poop in her 'gina last night.

This kid. She is too much.

Asshole, Dick, Fuck. In That Order.

Sometimes I get a little off-track with this blog. Half my posts of late have just been rants and ramblings that have absolutely nothing to do with parenting, and it seems like it's been a while since I actually wrote a post about the shit my kid is doing now. And there is so much shit she is doing now, I can hardly keep up. In fact, I wrote out a checklist of shit-she-is-doing points to hit in this post, so I don't forget anything.

Overall, I'd say the biggest change I've seen in Caitlyn over the past few months (besides, you know, the fact that she never shuts up, ever ever) is how she wants to do everything I do. I mean, obviously this isn't brand new or anything... pretty much everything babies and toddlers do is mocking on some level. The difference now is that she's not just mirroring me when I prompt her to anymore. She's started doing these things of her own accord.

The mirroring thing had hit a high point a few months ago, when she would try to do things like shave her legs in the shower when I did. That kind of mirroring is fucking adorable (you know, except for the part where she thinks she can play with my razor). Recently though, her attempts at being just like mommy have been slightly less adorable. For example, while we were on vacation, I was vacation-eating and it gave me the shits because my body had gotten used to me being pretty healthy of late. One afternoon I spent a solid 30 minutes in the bathroom with diarrhea (I know how you love these kinds of stories- you're welcome!). And in those 30 minutes, Caitlyn walked into the bathroom, oh, I don't know, let's go with 700 times. Shortly after the entire contents of my digestive tract had been forcibly removed, Caitlyn decided she wanted to use the potty.

This has actually also been a big milestone for us of late. It's certainly not consistent yet, but she pees on the potty at least once a day now. Which isn't my point at all. My point is that when Caitlyn says she needs to go potty, I immediately and enthusiastically encourage her. So was the case on the day I got the shits.

She finds it pretty novel, using the big girl toilet, so I never quite know what to expect when she says she has to go. Sometimes she pees almost immediately. Sometimes she insists on getting on and off the toilet 10 times. Sometimes she sits there for 2 seconds, declares she's "all done", then flushes the toilet 4 times. Sometimes she mostly just unravels the toilet paper. Her newest thing is the take the toilet cleaner brush out of the holder and dunk it into the toilet the moment she gets up. On that day though, her mission was clear. She was going to make fun of me. She climbed up onto the toilet (because GOD FORBID I help her up) and immediately scrunched up her face and made some fake straining noises. She then hopped right back down and said "mommy's turn!". Uncool, kid.

Since we are on the subject, though, I should say that during our vacation, and in the week since we've come home, there has been a great increase in using the potty. Two nights ago, Caitlyn peed on the potty 3 separate times. Then she pooped on there too. I've never been so excited about another person's bowel movements in my life. I'm hoping we can move on to underwear in a couple more months.

There is another area where Caitlyn is starting to hit her stride though, no longer just taking cues from mommy, but really owning it as her own. Cursing.

As you may remember, Caitlyn's first bad word was asshole. She was mistakenly under the impression that this was the dog's name, though, so I couldn't really hold it against her. After that she started saying dick. I will take 100% responsibility on that one, because it's not just that I said it to her once and she repeated it, it's the fact that after she repeated it I started laughing hysterically. And really, who wouldn't? When you are mad at your tiny 18 month old for some random act of attitude and she responds by beaming her best smile at you and confidentally, comically declaring "DICK!", well, just, how DON'T you laugh at that? You can't. It's physically impossible. I mean, you know, until the 30th time or so. Now I can actually hold a straight face long enough to tell her it isn't a nice word and that she shouldn't say it. And mostly she doesn't anymore, save for a rare occasion when she knows she's in a lot of trouble and she thinks her comic relief will save her from time outs (or beatings. I mean, probably beatings. I try to use a 70/30 beating to time out ratio).

The problem now, though, is that she isn't just using these words because she knows they will make me laugh. She's using them in context. Actually, "them" is inaccurate. "It" is more appropriate. Because there is only one bad word she regularly uses now. She doesn't use it in anger. This is not a tantrum kind of thing. She's absolutely not trying to get a reaction out of me.

The first time she said it, I hardly noticed. I sort of just glanced at Rodolfo, eyebrows raised, as if to say "did you hear that too?". He wasn't sure either, so we assumed it was some sort of toddler jibberish word that just sounded like the word we, as adults, would automatically hear. After that I started to notice a pattern though. She would always say it after some mild inconvenience. She would drop something on the floor or the dog would steal her last goldfish cracker, something like that. Nothing she would actually be that upset about. And it was always muttered under her breath. Not because she thought she might get in trouble, but because when I say it in the context she was using for it, I'd mutter it under MY breath. Then, at some point (that point being when she started lovingly embracing Swiper the Fox's catchphrase "oh, man!"), she started adding "man!" to the mix.

It went something like this: mild inconvenience, then exasperated sigh, followed by "man... fuck".

We are going to have to get that shit cleared up before she goes to Kindergarten.

I think I'll split this into two posts. More Caitlyn updates tomorrow-ish.

Adventures in Shitting

I live in Northern New Jersey. It is not even remotely an exaggeration to say that I live within 10 miles of at least 4 different malls (and if we were to add another 10 miles, I could probably double the number of malls). I'm not a big fan of malls, generally, but sometimes I have to drag myself to one of them.

Any time I have to make a trip to the mall, I weigh the pros and cons and decide which one will get me in and out the fastest. When you spent 4 years of your life working in a mall, let me assure you that you don't spend a single second longer than absolutely necessary inside one of those motherfuckers. Let me break down the choices:

1. The Closest Mall: Also the rich people mall with the good movie theater that I will only go to on Sundays (when the rest of the mall is closed) because otherwise it takes half an hour to find parking. I generally avoid this mall like the plague, because I can't stand the traffic and the rich-bitch stores.

2. The Second Closest Mall: AKA the mall in the same town as the first mall, like 3 miles down the highway. A nicer mall, with less traffic, easier parking and significantly less hoodrats bussed in from the nearby ghettos. A fat girl store, which is convenient and Old Navy and Children's Place, so I can get inexpensive clothes for Caitlyn, that I will be less annoyed about when she stains them after wearing something for less than 5 minutes. Also, a little carousel that never has a line. This is my mall of preference.

3. The Third Mall in the Same Town: I'm not even kidding: This is an outlet mall with a Target attached. I only ever go here if I need something from Target, but I make an effort to steer clear of it because I don't need fucking discounted, outlet store Nikes, so it's basically a waste of my time.

4. The Mall Where I Used to Work: It's the ghetto mall of the 4, but I know the good spots to park and where all the stores are, so I never have to look for anything. There is also a Dairy (Diarrhea? What?) Queen and the place where I get my hair cut. Pretty much I go here to get my hair cut and never ever set foot in the store where I used to work, lest I have to waste 20 minutes talking to my ex-coworkers and pretending like I care about their lives.

So. I needed to go to the mall last week (At first I wrote "weekend" and then I realized that no, you literally could not pay me to go there on a Saturday). We ended up at mall #1. The snooty douche, traffic clusterfuck mall. I can't remember exactly why I chose that mall on that day, but it was, in fact, a weekday, so it was slightly less enraging than usual.

We did our shopping. I found a really cute dress to wear out for my birthday celebration this weekend. After that, we stopped by the food court and grabbed some dinner. Then I realized that Caitlyn needed a diaper change.

If there is one thing I will absolutely give this mall all the props for, it is that is has the nicest family bathroom I've ever seen. Actually, let me clarify. It's not just a bathroom. It's a family "lounge". There are curtained off areas for breastfeeding, a tv playing cartoons and toys and sinks and counter space galore. It's truly fancy. Adjacent to the family lounge is the actual family bathroom. And even that is cool. There's a regular sized toilet and a toddler sized one. They've truly thought of everything.

Anyway, Caitlyn needed a new diaper. And mommy had to take a shit. Off to the family bathroom we went! The changing tables are in the lounge area, so I decided to go to the actual bathroom first and take care of my needs first, for once. I locked the door behind me and sat down.

After a moment of trying to prematurely flush my toilet, Caitlyn noticed the little kid toilet. She's a pro at taking off her diaper anyway, so obviously she wasn't going to wait for me to be done to try this thing out. So she took off her shorts. And her diaper.

I'm wondering at this point, if I've mentioned Caitlyn's tendency to want to be completely naked while she lounges (please note that I did not say "uses") on her potty? The fact that we were in a public restroom did nothing to stop her determination to get naked for potty time. Once that diaper was off, she pulled off her shirt, then sat down on the floor next to me to pull of her shoes and socks. I mean, who PEES ON THE POTTY while wearing shoes and socks? Me, actually. I pointed this out to her while she stripped down, trying to reason with my 2 year old, who was now sitting bare-assed on the floor of a public fucking restroom. Did I mention that I was taking a shit? Yeah. There was nothing more I could do.

Just then, the door of the bathroom burst open. There I was, sitting on the toilet taking a shit, my naked kid sitting on the floor next to me, presumably contracting Public Restroom Floor Syphilis, in the fancy mall with the snooty people and the broken fucking locks. It was a middle-aged man and his probably 8ish-year-old son. Of course. Neither of them felt the need to close the door after realizing I was in there, in case you were wondering. Nothing makes a trip to the mall complete quite like having to lean over mid-dump to reclose the door of a room that smells like your ass in front of a couple of strangers who have absolutely no courtesy whatsoever.

Anyway. Caitlyn decided after that to spend 5 or so seconds sitting on the kid toilet, very blatantly NOT actually going to the bathroom, before she milled around naked while I finished my shit, and one other person (who DID close the door behind her, at least) walked in on us.

At that point, I wanted nothing more than to get some clothes on my kid and high-tail it the hell out of there. So I grabbed her, COMPLETELY NAKED, and walked into the lounge area with the necessary counter space to get her off the damn floor, trying to explain to the other families, including the second person who walked in on us, that I was not, in fact, a total weirdo who lets her kid wander around mall bathrooms naked.

I think we need to stick to the ghetto mall, where the bathrooms are just bathrooms, and no one is hanging around directly outside the door to witness your naked toddler/taking a shit shame.

Judgy Playground Moms Can Lick My Scrotum. Yes. Scrotum.

My parenting was judged by a complete stranger.

I know. You've all been there too. No pity party for Jaclyn today. Let me start with what happened earlier in the week:

Rodolfo and I needed a new mattress. We've been putting it off... oh, let's say 3 years, and so when we saw Sears was having a sale, we decided to finally suck it up and spend the money so we could stop waking up with backaches every morning.

We were in the store, setting up delivery for our new bed when Caitlyn just full-on melted down. I've said it before, she has her asshole moments, but nothing like this. This wasn't a minute or two of whining over a toy or because I wouldn't let her ride the escalator for the 10th time or because I made her wear shoes; this was a full-blown, middle of a store where we were in the middle of a large transaction and therefore javascript:void(0)could not just walk out, hissy fit.

The funniest part is that there was no real catalyst for it. I think she may be getting another set of molars, because she hasn't been eating or sleeping much, so I can only attribute it to that. She simply decided after 20 minutes or so of wandering around, riding the escalator and carrying around the Dora purse I was planning to buy her, that she was done with Sears. DONE. She melted first into sobs, then angry, irrational rage when I tried to pick her up off the floor (because obviously you don't stand up for a meltdown. You must be face down on the floor).

I tried, you guys. I tried to calm her down, to distract her. I went so far as to try to get her to jump on the beds because she loves to do that at home. No. A resounding and resentful no (followed by another dramatic, face-down flop onto the ground). When she reached for the last trick in her bag, full-blown screaming, I told Rodolfo I'd wait for him in the mall. At least then people would only be passing by as they gave me dirty looks.

To my utter relief, as I walked out of Sears, I noticed the mall had installed one of those indoor, toddler playgrounds right at the Sears entrance. Yes. I could sit, she could play and shut the fuck up and stop screaming in my face. Except, of course, it didn't quite go down like that.

Caitlyn was still mad. I coaxed her onto the slide once, and then she gave up. She collapsed onto the rug of the play area and sobbed for no reason in particular. And you know what? I let her. A few times I made the obligatory amount of effort by asking if she was ready to play yet. She scowled and answered NO each time. So I let her cry it out for the next 15 minutes or so.

You are probably thinking this is where the judgment happened, but actually the other moms and dads were fucking fantastic. This particular play area was very clearly intended for toddlers, so I'm sure they all felt my pain. And not a single one of them gave me the "control your asshole kid" glare that I was expecting. In fact, they joked around with me about Caitlyn's tantrum. Commiserated.

A funny thing happened after that. Caitlyn realized that I wasn't responding to her shitty attitude. It took a while, but eventually she picked herself up off the floor, ran over and gave me a hug. Then she started playing with another little girl until Rodolfo showed up. She started to melt down again when it was time to leave, which only got worse when we refused to reward her bad behavior and walked right past the carousel that she loves and rides every time we visit the mall. Still, I felt like I won that night.

In any case, it's kind of funny how that worked out. I was completely expecting judgment and dirty looks because my kid was flat-out acting like a dick, but I got nothing but sympathy. I guess I was feeling a certain solidarity with other moms this week because of it, so it definitely threw me off when I was told about the random stranger who judged me to my babysitter today at the park.

My babysitter has a 3 year old son and when she took our kids to the park, another mom asked her if they were both her children. She clarified that the boy was hers, but that she is Caitlyn's babysitter.

The other, random stranger mom who has never even met me, decided that I was a shitty mom right then and there. "Oh", she said "How sad. You have her all day?". Then she went on to ask if I "really have to work" and said that "people should plan if they want to have kids". Plan to marry a rich man, apparently.

My babysitter, being the fantastic badass that she is, responded with something along the lines of "you're right. Only rich people should be allowed to have kids, so they can stay home and let their nannies raise them". The woman went on to say that her husband doesn't let her work, to which my new hero very effectively ended the conversation by saying she had "to go to work. And besides, you probably have to go home and wash your husband's feet or something".

Have I mentioned how much I love this woman? She told me she thinks the woman was trying to pay her some sort of backwards compliment for being a stay-at-home mom, without having even a drop of actual information about her life and circumstances. Which led to a whole other conversation about the assumptions people make.

You see, my babysitter is biracial. It's something I immediately loved about her because our family is also biracial and so I knew there were certain things she would get about us right away. The conflicts of culture when raising a child by parents of different races can be really annoying. With Rodolfo and I in particular, we are both extremely stubborn. Extremely. So, while we usually do just fine sorting out the little stuff, when we have a major conflict of ideals about an aspect of child-rearing, neither of us is particularly inclined to fold.

Our babysitter gets this. She realizes that sometimes I'm going to tell her one thing and Rodolfo is going to tell her the complete opposite. She knows how to find the right balance, to respect both of our wishes and find a middle ground. Come to think of it, should we ever need the services of a marriage counselor, we might do well to ask her opinion first.

In any case, when we were talking about the fact that this random, judgy bitch at the park felt like she had some sort of solidarity with her because they were both at home with their children, it made me think of something else. White people.

I'm curious if it's just me. You see, it's happened to me on MANY occasions. It would seem that some of the other white people, the ones who don't particularly like blacks and Hispanics, seem to think we are on the same team in that respect (or lack thereof). They think they can whisper in my ear about "all the blacks" or how "no one in this store speaks English- they should go back to their country!", simply because we are both white.

My favorite response is always to mention the fact that English isn't my husband's first language, that some of his family members living in this country don't speak English at all (before you get all annoyed about that one, I'd like to point out that they live in a primarily Hispanic community and get along just fine without it. I suppose though, you could also react the way my dad does and point out that "we" are "catering to them" and that "the Italians had to learn English!". I know I've mentioned that he's an asshole. Let me just reiterate that now.) and that our daughter, despite appearing to be white, is both biracial and bilingual.

Does this happen to you other white people? Can we get the word out that not all of us (despite our frequent inappropriate jokes on our blog) are racist?

Anyway, that was all very off-topic. In any case, my babysitter is the fucking shit and defended me to some random, bitchy stranger and put her in her place. It's always frustrating to think someone is judging you because you have to go to work. I don't think it's quite the "mommy wars" situation it can get made out to be. I just think some people are assholes.

In any case, its nice to know the person watching my kid has my back, understands why I'm leaving my kid with her and respects that choice and expects anyone who thinks they are allowed to assert their opinion on it respects it too. If ever I questioned my choice to go back to work after Caitlyn was born, this made me sure I made the right choice. Because I'm not the only one teaching Caitlyn to be a super awesome badass who stands up for herself.