Tag / Toddlers

by Michael

Question For The Week

Why does Bryce react differently to me than he does to his mother?  This makes his mother go nuts.  It makes his father, well, laugh and, then, think, and shrug.  Or make something up.

Who knows what happens in that little curly head as evening arrives.  Usually we’ll both be home.  Sometimes I get in late or I’m not around before the shouting and screaming are done.  It’s fine because I handle the mornings, starting at the unacceptable hour around 7am, and I’m grumbling through it because it’s unfair that I should have to wake up before 9am.  It’s worse that I have to communicate with a kid who I can’t understand, who pretends he can’t understand, and with other people like grandmothers before 10am.  A conversation with me before 10am is not really a conversation.  But I digress.

Dawn will start the evening ritual.  “Time to take a bath.”  And what does the boy do?  He whimpers and complains in that tone that reminds me of a noisy irritating cat.  I don’t like cats.  Even quiet ones.  Bryce will slump to the bathroom.  Or he’ll slowly start cleaning up his toys.  Or he’ll do nothing at all.  Dawn will call him.

If I’m there, I’m cooking or something like that.  I’m disengaged until my assistance is required by the wife.  But I watch this sometimes.  I can’t help but hear it.

I hear the water running in the tub.  I hear them struggling.  Bryce is whining, Dawn instructing.  The noise level is rising.  I’ll turn on some “better” music.  Jazz or something.  I don’t like the soundtrack of my house during the evening ritual.  Sooner or later Bryce will cry and scream, and this will last through the entire bath.  Sometimes he’ll stand in the tub, refusing to sit.  He’ll bat at the washcloth covered hand his mother waves toward him.  It’s tragic.

I’ve told him several times that his mother doesn’t need the grief.  That I don’t either.  I’ve explained that his mother has cared for him from before he was a person and that the way for him to express gratitude is to hush and splash like he has some sense.  I’ve told him that he’s dirty or nasty or stinky or sticky and that his mother has to clean him even though her cleaning him is a movement of love and not sanity because no one in their right minds would want to clean a noisy, fussy, irritable toddler like him.  He doesn’t hear me through his screams.  He doesn’t hear because I haven’t used the voice.

I use it when I’m passed the point of patience.  And the voice works.  The voice settles it.  It’s my fathering voice.  I have a preaching voice and, I’ve decided as of this writing, a fathering voice.  It’s similar to the preaching voice but it’s especially for the boy.  There’s a tinge of bass and depth and anger, even if I’m not angry.  It’s the tone that tells him that the noise is finished.

Perhaps that is the answer.  But sometimes I don’t use the voice.  I don’t need to.  And this is what causes my wife consternation.  When she’s at school and I have to bath him, he does none of the noise.  When I change him, he doesn’t do the thing he does with mommy.  So who knows what it is.  Do you?  I’ve told Dawn a few times that it wouldn’t hurt to practice using a different voice, doing low and deep rather than her usual operatic vocal match.  It might not work, but it just might shake the boy up enough.

by Michael

Mondays With My Boy #2

I knew it would be a slow Monday.  The last few have been slow, trudging along the way I do most Monday mornings because my body needed more sleep than I got to recover from a long end to another week.

I woke up mumbling, grumbling that my wife was leaving.  Her foot heels clicked and capped over our floor.  I heard her rummaging through the fridge, finding food for her lunch.  I heard my boy move in his crib.

Her departure each morning sends a switch to my son.  Whenever one of us leaves, and he’s in his bed awake, we must say goodbye.  If we don’t, it’s a sign of bad things to come for the person left behind.  So the switch gets turned and Dawn greets him.  From time to time, she’ll change him or give him that sippy cup.  If she doesn’t have time, I’m limping or crawling or fumbling out of bed to do whatever.  Then Dawn leaves.

Sometimes the boy turns the switch off and returns to sleep without a sound.  Sometimes—read, on Mondays—he doesn’t. He knows it’s my day off.  He’s knows once I’m awake, grasping for darkness and wrapping my fingers around the air hoping that sleep will return, that I cannot return to sleep.  We don’t share the same switch.  He’ll happily find an hour plus nap when late morning comes and I give him back to the bed.  But me, well, I’ll sit up, unable to meet sleep, unable to sink back into that weird dream about being on some new Blue Line stop that I’ve never seen before.  No, I’ll stay awake and be mad at him because he’ll fall right to sleep.  He’ll grab that fuzzy blue or green blanket and breathe deeply until the sleep fairy comes and takes him away.

Before his nap, before he became my little enemy on Monday, we cooked breakfast.  First, we put up the clean dishes from the washer.  Second, I washed the stray dishes that were perching over the sink and along the countertop.  I have a rule: I don’t cook in a dirty kitchen.  Dirty is defined generally as a kitchen with crumbs anywhere; a kitchen with dishes in the sink; or a kitchen where any of the counters have things on top of them which will prevent me from doing my business.  Third, I cut up cherries for the boy and placed them on his high seat.  He watched me, waiting for me to put him up with the cherries.  I had time.  We had 2-3 more minutes until I knew he would complain about it being as late as 8:30 and his having not yet ate.  This kid has been telling time by his belly for months.

I started the grits, remembering that recipe that Grammie Joseph used for shrimp and grits.  I didn’t have the energy for those grits, so I improvised, thanking God for a microwave and for water and for milk and for cheese.  The grits cooled while Bryce stood there, silent, questioning me in his eyes about those cherries and about that milk.  I turned the fire under the skillet for the turkey.  Incidentally, when you don’t eat pork, can you say ‘bacon’ if you would only be eating turkey bacon in the first place?  Just a question.

The bacon crisped on the stove.  I placed the kid in the chair.  As always, he put too much in his mouth for me to think him safe.  I lectured him on how we eat one small slice of cherry at a time, maybe two.  Certainly not five.  He cheeks bulged with his eyes.  He was happy.  I knew he was because he was quiet.  He’s happy when he’s quiet and when he’s squealing.

I scrambled two eggs after the bacon finished.  He started calling.  He was done with his cherries which meant, impatient as he is, I was late with whatever was next.  I put the grits before him.  He started saying “hot” as I blew them.  Then he joined me blowing the grits.  They were already cool enough, but this blowing thing, this “hot” thing is a tradition between us.

I started spooning him grits.  I moved back and forth from the high baby seat to the stove.  “Hot” blow spoon spoon walk away.  “Hot” blow spoon spoon walk away.  He didn’t like this but he got over it.  I brought him eggs, siding them with the rest of his grits.  I pulled my bowl of grits and my saucer of bacon and eggs.  He looked at my plate and then pointed to his.  He thought I was moving too slowly.  I felt him say, “Hey, daddy, wake up.  Get it moving.”   We ate.  Him first mostly.  When he was finished, he asked for milk.  He had water.  I told him to drink that.

He pointed to the sippy cup on the counter.  “Wait,” I told him.  “Did I rush you through your breakfast?”  He looked at me, his face turning to the side.  I wondered what he was thinking. It wasn’t even nine o’clock and he was already laughing at me in his little head.  I got up to give him his milk after I finished.  He drank and I watched.