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My son and I spend a lot of time alone together.  He goes to school on weekdays, but in the evenings and on weekends we’re usually a two-person show.  Even though DB is now almost four years old, I haven’t yet gotten the hang of the whole “play date” thing.  (I object to calling a kid’s playtime with a friend a “date” - maybe that’s my problem.)  As a result, I don’t have a good sense of how other same-age kids behave outside of the five minutes I see them at school drop-off.  Furthermore, I don’t get to know other parents to find out how they view their own skills.  My tendency is to believe other people are much better at parenting than I am.  More consistent, more confident, more creative.

It was enlightening and encouraging, therefore, to attend a birthday party with DB at which the guest list was heavy on classmates.  While the kids had a ball in the playroom, several of the parents and I camped out in the hall and swapped horror stories.  This boy makes up exceedingly tall tales about how the lamp got broken.  This girl wants to marry each and every boy in her class.  That kid had a really hard time adjusting to the new baby.  This one won’t stay in bed.  Each of us confessed to something we thought was dreadful, only to have at least one other parent chime in with “oh, I’ve done that!!”  We listened to each other and laughed, and, I suspect, thanked our lucky stars to have gained this valuable insight:  none of us actually knows what we’re doing.  We are all muddling through as best we can, reading books and consulting the school social worker and – bottom line – loving our children fiercely.  Hoping not to cause lasting damage.

Surely there are some parents who do know what they are doing.  I guess they were the ones supervising the kids in the playroom while we muddlers lurked and shirked in the hallway.

DB has updated his pronunciation of his school friends’ favorite superhero, from “Gravel Hock” (huh?) to “Credible Hock” (ohhhh…).  He learns some very interesting things at school from his peer group of boys in their late threes and early fours.

I would love to see a comic book parody about this Credible Hock guy.  By day, a mild-mannered and scrupulously honest pawnshop owner.  By night, a crusader for justice who fights petty criminals by sneaking up behind them and clearing his throat really hard.  But then he has to go look for a tissue and a trash can, because he can’t spit onto the sidewalk – that would be littering.

What will I do when DB gets older and becomes more worldly?  If I have to rely on my personal creativity alone, I will have nothing funny to write.

[Here's a piece that I drafted several months ago but for some reason didn't post.  Things have improved since I wrote it, I'm happy to say.]

Life with a three-year-old is hard.  As a solo parent, I have no one to back me up when I insist that hands should be washed before meals, or that it is in fact bedtime.  Or conversely, no one to step in and send ME for a time-out when I’m making unreasonable demands.  And DB has a lot of brainpower free to figure out how to exploit my weaknesses.  He’s not concerned about laundry or bills or grocery shopping; the banana just magically appears every day at the breakfast table.  His teachers say they are impressed with his language skills, and I wonder if he shouts “Stop TELLING me!” at them the way he does with me.

Tonight at dinner, I watched as he polished off his chicken and broccoli without a shred of fuss.  He did the same at lunch with his mac and cheese and grapes.  I thought back eighteen months or so, when it seemed that he would never ever expand his repertoire beyond graham crackers with peanut butter.  And so I take heart in the idea that one day, logic and reason will be embraced.  He won’t be three years old forever.  I just hope we both live long enough to taste the fruits of four.

“No!  Don’t make me go back!”

This is not a quote from DB.  This is how I feel at the end of those rare occasions when I catch a whiff of what life was like in the years B.C. (before child).

A few weeks ago I visited by myself with a group of college friends.  (Thanks for the babysitting, Mom!)  How remarkable it is to have adult conversations, in which people look you in the eyes when they talk, and wait for you to finish your thought, and never once bring up the subject of garbage trucks.  This weekend a dear old friend came for a visit and claimed that when he wants to go do something, he goes and does it, without even considering whether he has brought along enough Pull-Ups and toy cars.  It’s hard to go back to being the sole proprietor of Mommy & Son Enterprises after tasting those kinds of freedoms.

DOF pointed out, however, that my individual rights were not terminated when DB arrived.  I am allowed to have other interests that my son does not share.  And I could even take a few minutes to myself to pursue them - while DB is in the house – without being branded a bad mother.  Shocking.

But true.  In the healthiest families the children feel loved and cared for, and feel that their needs and wants count for something – but they also know unequivocally that they are Not In Charge.

Noting droopage that will soon turn to trippage, I tell my son:  pull up your sock.  His response?

“I’m pulling up it.”

Leave it to DB to point out the inconsistencies in English sentence structure.  He made a direct substitution of pronoun (“it”) for noun (“my sock”), and he avoided ending a sentence with a preposition, and yet he is incorrect.

Poor kid.  He has assimilated the rules but hasn’t catched on to all the exceptions.

Bedtime has become a fiasco.  Mommy, something hurts.  (The mysterious unspecified “something.”  If I pretend to be sick, maybe she won’t make me stay in my room by myself.)  Mommy, come check on me.  Mommy, be in my room while I drink water.  You be a mama turtle and I’ll be a baby cat (all the better to outrun the mama turtle).  Mommy, leave the door open a big bit.

And tonight:  “Mommy, what shall I do?”

Try to distract me with an impressive display of grammar, will you?  No dice, kid.  GO TO SLEEP!

DB is very good at entertaining himself.  He gets engrossed in driving his cars or his trains, or in building roads and tracks for the cars and trains to drive on, and will concentrate for 15 or 20 minutes – plenty of time for mommy to take a shower.

Or not.  Last time I tried this, he started talking to me through the door as I was getting ready.  “Look, mommy!  I’m pulling a heavy load!” (Fortunately NOT referring to his pants.)  I poked my head out and reminded him that once I got in the shower, I wouldn’t be able to hear him.

“Okay, mommy.  I’ll leave you alone,” he replied.  “Enjoy your shower!”

Somehow I missed Diabolical Boy’s implied “heh heh heh” at the end of that statement, and showered in blissful ignorance until he came bounding into the bathroom. 

“Look what I found!”  Uh oh.  He’s holding a brick of something, but without my glasses I have no hope of identifying it.

“What did you find?”

“Bread!”  With this hint, I can now tell that the object in his hand is half of a dinner roll that had been left, wrapped in a napkin, in a bowl in the middle of the dining room table.  To find it, DB would have had to leave footprints on the tablecloth.  And he undoubtedly already had this little expedition in mind when he wished me a happy shower.

So I don’t provide those opportunities anymore.  I shower at night, or in the afternoon before fetching the boy from school.  Because bringing bread rolls into the bathroom is funny; scaling the bookshelves and toppling them onto oneself, or helping oneself to the contents of the knife drawer, not so much.

DB has amazing eyesight.  Or rather, amazing visual acuity [n. shrewdness, acuteness of perception].  He can look out of the window and see a brown speckled bird in the brown speckled grass.  He points out every airplane passing through our portion of sky.  From the middle of the back seat of the car, he can spot a tow truck in a parking lot a block away.  Nothing escapes this kid’s notice.

Nothing.  Including tiny little specks of whatever that find their way into his bathwater.  “It’s a bug!” he shouts, pointing to a minuscule drifting puff of sock lint.  “Get it OUUUWWTT!!”  A flake of leaf, a hair; any Unidentified Floating Object elicits the same reaction.  I should keep a little aquarium net on hand, or maybe a coffee filter, to make sure the water is sufficiently uncontaminated for Dirt Boy to wash in.

He may grow out of this little neurosis, especially if he takes after his mother and requires corrective lenses at an early age.  (If you can’t see the junk in the water, it can’t upset you.)  If not, there’s a simple solution.  Cleaning the bathroom to the desired standard will become HIS responsibility.

Want to have some fun?  (Or earn yourself a few moments of silence in a frantic day?)  Tell your resident three-year-old who is demanding to see a school bus to “keep your eyes peeled.”

(Freeze.  Especially the eyes.)

(Pause.)

(Palpable electric current in the air as synapses fire while he searches his vocabulary and not-so-vast life experience trying to make sense of what he just heard.)

I wasn’t trying to be mean; I just tossed off the expression without thinking about how DB, living in the strictly literal world of Late Toddlerville, would attempt to interpret it.  I took pity on him and was starting to explain, when he quavered, “I’m keeping my eyes field” (or possibly “feeled” – I really have no idea).

In case you are now wondering (as I was) where this expression comes from, it’s not as colorful an origin as you might think.  It came into usage in print in the U.S. around 1850 and basically just means “keep your eyelids open.”  Well, duh.

Phew.  Something to write about that doesn’t involve You Know What.