John's Whizzbang Day

DEEP THOUGHTS

When the dinner table is falling apart, metaphorically speaking, and John won't eat the meal he loved eating last night, so he's whining endlessly in a tone like nails on the chalkboard, but the baby is screaming her head off for an unknown reason so I can't hear the preschooler whining over the baby screaming, do I feel relief or overwhelm or both at once? These are the philosophical questions of motherhood.

RULES

And the scene continued, revealing John saying a cute thing. He's really into rules these days. He's trying to figure out how things work, whether it's mechanical, social, cultural, or so forth. He's always telling me "rules" like, "Ladybugs are okay!" (because they don't bite). So last night the dinner meltdown scene continued and I realized John was way over hungry because he hadn't eat the meal I set before him and--because we have all our food issues--I said I'd make him something else after daddy and I finished our dinner. The whining turned to outright weeping. John had lost it. I asked him to play in the den with daddy for five minutes (and I even set a timer as a comfort to John) so I could clean up a little bit, as Mary had strewn rice, beans, tomatoes, and shredded cheese across most of the kitchen floor and I didn't want people walking all over it, spreading it around. My logical request couldn't be perceived by an over hungry, now hysterical boy and he had to be dragged off to the den weeping and he didn't stop weeping the entire time I was briefly cleaning up.

Then I got him his acceptable dinner, he calmed down, and he told me, "When I was crying, I said, 'Mama.'"

I replied, "I know, honey. You wanted mama. But I told you I needed to clean up for just five minutes and I promised I was going to help you."

Then John told me 'the rules' with wide-eyed certainty, "But, mama, boys belong in kitchens when their mamas are cleaning up. Boys belong in their Learning Towers."

I just loved how he presented it to me in the syntax of a rule. Obviously John has picked up that I try to state rules as immutable facts of nature ("we don't spit," "children must ride in car seats") instead of stating them as something pertaining only to John.

CRUSHING MY HEART

The whole afternoon was rather rough. Earlier, for the first time, John had intimated that he wanted to run away from home, although he doesn't quite know that concept. I had put him into time out because he purposefully shoved his sister down (after having purposefully kicked her minutes earlier, for which we, very unusually, granted him only a warning). After time out, John told me that he had a house "in the city" (referring to Curious George's set-up). Then John told me that he does not like our family and wants to go see his other family. I had to ask for clarity because I was flabbergasted.

I then took the kids outside to play to provide a nice change of scenery. At one point, John opened the back gate into the "woods" behind our house and started to walk down the path. I corrected him that he may never go through the gates without Mama or Daddy and that we were not going to play back there today. He calmly told me, "I'm just going to see my other family. I don't like this family." And he repeated it several times. Somehow, despite the fact that my first-time mother's heart was pulsating and smashed on the dirty ground because John had ripped it out, I managed to tell him that we love him, so he's stuck with us and he'd better come back into the yard right now.

Maybe John just had to have a whizzbang day for his last day of being two years old.