Tantrums with my two year old

Upstairs, the child is screaming and pulling on her door. Down here, I am listening, screaming too, on the inside.

The house is perpetually messy. Picking up after children is a never ending task. I believe it has something to do with entropy or laziness or the lack of a good Germanic upbringing. At what age do they start asking you to put your shoes away?

I’m looking at a purple dinosaur who can recite his ABC’s, and, who is also capable of making a noise to accompany each letter of the alphabet. The toy dinosaur looks smug. One day, I’m sure my children will surpass him, not today though.

She says, “Read me these books.”

I say, “I’ll read you two books.”

She counts out the books, “One, two, three, five.”

I say, “I’ll read you two books.” She does not have object permanence yet. Thus, though she can count to ten she doesn’t actually understand that the numbers can be connected to objects.

After I read her two books she is certain that I should have read more. I try to reason with her, but it doesn’t work. And that is how she wound up upstairs, crying at the door. “Read me more books,” she screams. A cry that’s somewhat hard to ignore.

For a moment after I’ve put the baby down in his crib, and the little girl is looking at books downstairs, I lie on the bed and look at the ceiling fan and the light curling in through the window. It is a nice moment. Soon thereafter, I hear a thunk, and the baby crying. I spring from the bed, Perhaps, later today, I’ll find another moment of quiet.

When I’m reading the story of Elmer the patchwork elephant I omit the word “stupid.” In Arthur, I change the word hate to don’t like. In Little Red Riding Hood, the hunter gets rid of the wolf instead of kills him. I think, we don’t allow those words in our house, though sometimes I’ve been guilty of using much worse. We don’t read them aloud, would be a more accurate rule.

After Elmer has not been called stupid, I understand that I am already rewriting narratives. She says, “I want to watch the creepy one with the princess,” and I say, “Don’t you want to watch the one with the astronaut?” But no, she’d rather watch the creepy 1930s one about the street girl who gets turned into a princess. It’s an old story, she seems to say, but a good one.

Sometimes, when they’re both down for naps, I’ll hear the baby cry, and I’ll pretend as though I can’t hear him. He’s so good natured he might lie up there for an hour, looking at the light on the wall—a man after my own heart.

A couple of weeks ago, when Stephanie was out of town, an older gentleman I was speaking with said that I was being Mr. Mom. “Yes,” I answered, smiling back, but not really minding the conversation too attentively because I was watching Sadie sprinting through the room. “I’m sorry,” I said, “Can you hold my purse? I really need to get her.” I did not say that. But imagine a world in which I did.