mean girls

I was trying to decide whether I should clean my house or write in my journal today, and I picked my journal even though I should probably tend to my house. We had a fruit festival at lunch and there are strawberry stains in the carpet that probably won’t come out.  I should care more, but the carpet is such a raggedy piece of shit in here that I’ve been treating it like a drop cloth. I let Joey play with his play doh on the carpet and he gets to spill milk anywhere he wants and the cats take the liberty of puking up their stomach bile in the middle of the night wherever they please.  We’re putting in hardwood floors soon so it really doesn’t matter at this point.

Now that Joey is older, we’ve been trying to come up with fun things to do with him on Sundays. One weekend we went to The Butterfly Place, which is a big indoor park with hundreds of beautiful butterflies flying around. That was fun, but a little underwhelming because you’re not allowed to touch the butterflies or encourage them to land on you. Since I like tactile activities, I spent the whole time resisting the urge to touch and running around chasing Joey and reminding him also not to touch while sweating my ass off in the tropical butterfly climate. And then there was the whining and crying each time I had to pull the kid out of a plant. He was trying to touch the flowers, but a toddler’s delicate touch is more like a strip and destroy mission, and he was ruining the butterflies’ food. Ruining the flowers was also a no-no, right up there on all the signs about touching the fragile butterflies.

Every time I tried to take a picture of a butterfly, it would fly away at the last second and I ended up with a camera full of plant pictures and no butterflies anywhere. Well, except for the one above. How did I not notice that fucking hand?

At one point another mother with a child around Joey’s age looked down at Joey digging in a pile of dirt and said, “Hey buddy, you’re the envy of all the other babies.” She said this because he was not strapped into a stroller. I know I probably should have spared myself the grief of chasing the child around the park, but the kid’s in a stroller everywhere interesting we go: post office, drugstore, bank and all the other random errand places I drag him to every day. He shouldn’t have to observe life from the confines of his five point harness everywhere we go.

Hey look what happens when I turn my attention away from the child for seven minutes to type on my computer!

A whole box of splenda packets on the floor.

This weekend we decided to go to a children’s indoor play place. They have a pretend grocery store, a dinosaur park, a sand room, an arts and crafts area, a big indoor climbing structure with an enormous slide and various other little themed rooms full of toys and activities. We didn’t even have time to pay at the register and Joey was off. And I hope it’s just a normal thing for his age and not some future predictor of ADHD, but the kid couldn’t make up his mind about where he wanted to be. One minute he’s got a dinosaur in his hand and then the next he’s slamming a plastic chicken from the grocery store into the traintracks in the train room. Eli and I spent the whole time returning toys to their specific areas. Plastic peaches don’t belong in the Jurassic room, just like books aren’t supposed to go in the sandbox.

The best part was watching Joey interact with the other children. Most of the kids were a little older than Joey and a little harder, more streetwise. He had every toy he tried to hold taken away from him at one point, and from what I could tell, the children doing the snatching of toys were all from the same greedy family. The same scenario happened over and over with two little girls. Joey is holding a block. Mean girl grabs it away from him and sneers. Mean girl’s dad walks over and scolds mean girl, taking toy out of her hands and giving it back to Joey. Mean girl SCREAMS her head off, and then runs to her mother, whining and sobbing and being a jerk. Joey looks on in amazement.

This happened with a block, a hot wheel car, a wooden saw and a Viking helmet. And I felt bad for the little girls who were whining because it was so obvious that they were tired and needed a nap. I wanted to tell the dad to take his kids the fuck home and quit torturing them, but who am I to say anything about someone else’s parenting. I just lingered close by while Joey played to make sure any homicidal tendencies toward him were kept at bay. And it was good for him to know that there are mean kids that will take his toys sometimes and he should suck it up and deal.

Anyway, since I’m the one who likes to crawl around on the floor with Joey, I got to take him on the slide. And once I got acclimated to the humidity and overpowering stench of feet up inside the climbing structure, I had a good time. The slide was stupid fast, and the first time we went down, Joey and I ended up flying off the bottom and skidding into the floor like we were crash landing off a rocket. I got a mat burn on my ankle. The next time I was ready for it and I was able to slow us down near the end and exit the slide at the bottom like a lady.

And on the last trip down the slide, a small boy of about five approached us at the bottom with a dinosaur puppet which I thought he was showing to Joey until he pressed it into my face while working the teeth in a chewing motion with his hand until his dad walked up and dragged him away. I still don’t know what the fuck that was about but it gave Eli a good laugh, especially because I couldn’t push the kid away since I was holding Joey and could only sit there helplessly while a dinosaur puppet invaded my face.

By the time we left we were all sweaty and tired. So we came home and took a nap. And I will never again underestimate the energy it takes to keep up with a toddler. Man, this kid kicks my ass. I’m thinking about having him do yoga with me in the mornings to put some good use to the endless amount of energy he seems to have.

I guess I understand now why some moms do Ritalin.