Reason #181 – I maul my child
Reason #181 – I maul my child
Aug 18Most women supposedly marry a man who reminds them of their father.
Not me.
I just discovered that I married my mother.
The Dane is tall, handsome, and hung has a PhD in Brain Science, and I often wonder what it was I did so well in a previous life that made me lucky enough to snag him in this one.
Not today, tho. Because today he became my mother.
C is entering that delightful age in which kids take “No” as an encouragement to find out how angry Mama can get without actually dying of an apoplectic fit. I hear it’s called the Terrible Twos and lasts till you kick them out of the house at 18 or whatever the legal age is where you live (I might just move to Iran – is the age of majority there really 15?)
I have found ways to get along with my toddler, but there are still a few crimes I do not tolerate gladly, and they have a pretty clear hierarchy that even a 22-month old can understand:
- Play with/waste/throw food: mealtime is instantly over.
- Use a toy to hurt somebody: the toy is immediately removed and confiscated for a few days.
- Tantrum without a valid reason: suffer the barbaric pinch of Doom.
- Damage property: meh – it’s all cheap, second hand IKEA furniture and Target clothes. I yell merely out of principle.
- Damage a book: IamgoingtoMURDERyourlittleASSuntilit’sDEAD!
I love books with a passion other people reserve for… well… for other people. I cannot begin to explain how important books are to me, not as objects but as windows
Literature opens our eyes and minds, makes us better people, makes us human.
And that is why, when I caught C vandalizing his beloved Cat in the Hat
C buried his face on the sofa and wept for 15 seconds, and then he went his merry way and found something else to play with.
The Dane heard me slap C’s hand, and he disapprovesvery strongly of physical punishment, so he stopped talking to me for a few hours to punish me for “mauling” the boy.
Hellfire and pitchforks would have been less painful. Seriously. I’m still smarting. (And the worst part is that I bet the kid has totally forgotten about the entire incident.)
Mom, you can chill: I’ve got a new overseer of my motherly performance, and unfortunately I really, really care about what he thinks of me.
Wait, I didn’t mean…
Great. Now I’m in even more trouble.
Hello doghouse, my old friend…
Well, if you look on the bright side, at least your mother is hung.
Of course, since I’m your childless reader looking to laugh at least once a day in my depressing, underemployed life (but working part time now, WOO HOO!), I haven’t figured out whether I believe in the BookWhack. Single, no-kid people making remarks about what they would do is often crow you have to eat later, after you’ve given birth.
But I’ll say it’s hellfire for me, too, because I advocate pet terrorism when it comes to peeing, pooing and destruction outside their given parameters. And I’ve been at it for over eleven years.
Most of my other lenient friends with pets are constantly picking up poo and cleaning piss from their carpets. My house is NOT going to be a shrine to my cat’s defecation habits. It’s bad enough that most of my bathroom is taken up with HIS bathroom.
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ofthesea Reply:
August 18th, 2011 at 9:28 pm
BAAHAHAHAHA, A-M you dolt!
And yeah, you gotta draw the line somewhere and, most importantly, someHOW.
Some days I’d kill for a rolled-up newspaper, I swear.
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Haha! Oh, this one was too good. I’m SO the same way. H can get away with an awful lot sometimes. But one little ‘rrrrrrrip’ and then the coy look up at me to see how mom will react sends the book into the “never to be enjoyed again until you’re 20″ pile followed by a “you DON’T rip books!” lecture that bounces squarely off of her selectively-deaf 17 month old ears.
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ofthesea Reply:
August 18th, 2011 at 2:32 pm
You said it perfectly: “that coy look.” I think C even makes his eyelashes longer and curlier just for those occasions.
Little brats.
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I can’t say that I disagree with hand smack.
Bring on the pitchforks and knives.
Although?
What’s funny is that the one time a horrible thing happened to one of F’s books, it was me. He pissed me off so badly that I chucked his copy of The Little Red Train across the room and spilt the binding on the spine.
I sobbed so hard about it, that if you ask him now why we’re kind to books, he says that if you’re not, Mama will cry.
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ofthesea Reply:
August 18th, 2011 at 9:47 am
I *so* knew you’d understand! I don’t give a rat’s ass if he ruins the sofa, but a book? A BOOK? Heaven help him.
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