this is only a test

I made the most delightful lunch of scrambled eggs with shredded cheese melted on top and I felt like a really good mom while I was making it because eggs are wholesome and nutritious and warm and yummy and, best of all, a real meal made in a pan.  FOR LUNCH.   Joey took one bite of the eggs, chewed them up a little and then, upon deciding that eggs are not suitable for his palate, dug them out of his mouth and threw them on the floor.  He then cleared his tray of all remaining egg and cheese bits by flinging them across the room.

I ended lunch, took him out of his high chair and while I was cleaning cheesy egg bits off the carpet, he crawled over to the CD player, pulled open the door and started grabbing CDs out and flinging them across the living room floor.  I got him out of the CD player and while I was gathering up the thirty or so CDs he’d managed to free in less than twenty seconds, he got busy in the bathroom pulling the toilet paper off the roll.  I got him out of the bathroom and as I was rewrapping the toilet paper around the roll he somehow managed to pull my purse down off the table and started emptying it of its contents, scattering receipts and credit cards all over the dining room floor.  I caught him just as he was about to eat a penny.

These events all took place in rapid succession during only thirty minutes of my day, and it’s fucking exhausting.  I was talking to a client on the phone when Joey figured out how to get the tape off the baking supplies cabinet in the kitchen and as I rounded the corner, I saw him standing there staring at his hands filled with flour as if contemplating his next move.  Eat it or throw it all over the kitchen?  I tried to clean him up while continuing my phone conversation until he arched his back, slid from my arms and hit the floor in a puff of flour.  Then the screaming started, because everyone knows babies do not like to be disrupted when they are raising hell in the cabinets.  I did the only thing I could.  I left him there to play in the flour and finished my phone call quickly outside on the front steps.

The way this child has been acting lately is new.  Up until recently he’s been a very sweet baby but lately, ever since he mastered the ability to walk, he has been slowly turning into a monster.  He’s testing me, I know this, and everyone warned me that this time would come, it’s just I didn’t expect he would test everything, all the time, and with such tireless devotion.

And I just keep reminding myself that patience is the only thing that will get me through this day.  Not wine.

Comments

[simka]

You've lots more patience than I - in fact, I think having a child is incredibly brave. And not because of the state of the world, but because they're so fucking hard. I thought that the wine sounded like a pretty good idea, but good luck with patience...

[Jenniffer]

Exhausting isn't even the word. I think you're right that he's testing everything around him, all the time, but, in my experience, it doesn't have much of anything to do with any intent to test Mom...unless she becomes an obstacle to the exploration rather than a facilitator. Then you're something he has to figure out how to work around rather than work with.
And now for some lame advice, of which you've already thought: First thing we did was baby-proof all the cabinets and then one cabinet we removed all of its normal contents and replaced his regular coffee with Folgers...wait, that's not it. We filled the cabinet back up with baby-safe stuff like big plastic bowls, wooden spoons, all sorts of interesting, baby-friendly *stuff*. Whenever the boys would start banging around trying to open the cabinets, one of us would go over and unlock it, "Oh my goodness, this cabinet is open, now, and what's all this?" Then you're facilitating and he's exploring for a good chunk of time in stuff you know is safe. We had cabinets like that in the bathrooms and the kitchen and the living room (under the entertainment system) and rotated *the stuff* every now and again so he never knew what was going to be behind Door #3.
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