I’ve heard lots of parents say about their children that if they’d have had the second one first (or the third or the fourth), that one would have been the only child they’d have had. I should probably be careful, as I’m sure I provoked my parents to those thoughts a time or two growing up. But there’s something about this number two child of ours that makes me shake my head and fear the future.
I should have known from the beginning that he would be the one to keep things interesting. He cried from the time he was six weeks old until he finally learned to walk. Since then he has been ninety to nothing, happy as you please, and trying his best to keep up with Cooper. But his fussiness of the early days has been replaced with something else: Orneriness, pure and simple.
It started small, with crazy eyes and wrinkled-nose faces-just enough to make a parent raise her brow and wonder where in the world he learned such a thing.
But the silliness progressed to more twisted incidents like biting the heads off the animal crackers, and even more heinous, removing the arms and legs as well. Not long ago, I found dozens of decapitated, appendage-free animal bodies strewn lifelessly around the living room. I guess that’s my payback for years of licking the cream out of the middle of the Oreos and tossing the cookies behind the couch. (Sorry, Mom.)
He can be a bit neurotic at times as well. For whatever reason, he has a fascination for flushing the toilet. He’ll randomly walk through the house, checking on the status of every potty in the place.
And the insanity doesn’t stop there. He’s also profoundly fixated on opening and closing the dishwasher door; it doesn’t matter whether it’s empty, full, or in the middle of the rinse cycle. When the compulsion hits him, he’s unstoppable.
His latest infatuation is with our seating arrangement at the kitchen table. It seems everyone has a place, and there’s no shifting far from it. If, by chance, I happen to sit in “Daddy’s chair”, Brisco firmly and promptly directs me to reposition.
Sometimes his orneriness manifests itself in the most mundane daily rituals. Every morning and afternoon when he wakes up in his crib, we are met by the same, simple phrase, “Mommy! I’m done!” He yells for a rescue in his relentless, high-decibel manner until someone appears at the door. It is then that we are met by the best Mary Poppins impersonation ever given by a two year old boy: “The sun is out! It’s time to wake up! It’s a pretty day!”
When we finally reach in to lift him out of the bed, it never fails that he insists on taking everything out of the crib and into the living room with him: three blankets, two pillows, Abbot the rabbit, Bear Bear the dog, his sippy cup and two pretzels…the same two he had to have before laying down the night before.
Then there are the times when his orneriness causes total mommy meltdown and is anything but cute. He has always been a “hider”. First it was things; now it’s himself. I have lost valuable objects for weeks, only to eventually find them in the back of a closet or at the bottom of a sock drawer. Sometimes it is himself that he hides, but he forgets to tell anyone to come and seek. Maybe he’s just taking a moment to plan his next adventure.
He is also the king of making senseless messes. He disappeared into his room the other night, and when I went back to find him, he had emptied every dresser drawer he could reach, as well as the tub of summer clothes I had stored in the closet. He was playing “back-set-ball” by tossing them all into his crib. What a fun game.
Much of the time, his messes involve food, in particularly, ketchup. The boy loves ketchup with anything, and although I may soon need a skin graph on my knuckles from constantly scrubbing it out of our clothes, I’ve decided if it’s the only way I can get him to eat green beans, then that’s ok by me. I seem to remember a liking I once had to dousing ketchup on my scrambled eggs.
He’s recently discovered Ranch dressing and gravy as well, but I think it’s the simple act of dipping to which he is so fond. One day, as I was putting on my makeup, he came into the bathroom eating a cookie. Just as I was about to shew him out the door, I caught him bringing his potty-soaked cookie up out of the bowl and heading straight for his lips. Yes, that little boy sure loves to dip.
People ask us all the time if we’ll have more kids. I usually just smile and say, “Well, it’s not really in the plan,” all the while I’m thinking to myself, “Don’t I look like I have my hands full with two?”
It’s pretty easy to weigh the pros and cons of nursing and night wakings and mustard in the carpet. But when I get a hug and a kiss and a bear hug on request; when I look back at old pictures and see my own silly, camera face-the same one my number two child has perfected without urging; when I remember how ornery a toe-headed little girl once was, I can almost consider the possibility. Almost.
And that’s All in a day’s work!
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