My son, the tiny insane person (i.e. toddler).

My son is really into blood curdling screams right now.  I on the other hand, am not.  I console myself with reassuring self pep talks about the likelihood of him growing out of this.  I mean seriously, I don’t know a single other person who uses this as a form of communication, so I think at least statistically I’ve got that on my side.

A friend of mine recently said to me, “Living with a toddler is like living with a tiny insane person.”

You ain’t kidding.  One that screams at top capacity when, for instance, he can’t continue standing at the counter dipping his fingers into the butter dish, or drive a giant car over his baby sister’s head, or indulge in the raspberry infused vodka he sees in the fridge, or pull all of the folded laundry off of the bed—and that’s just one hour of time.  That’s the kind of insane person I’m talking about.  Not even three feet tall, and full of ideas about how things ought to go for him, but severely lacking in either proper communication skills or any true sense of consequences.  I’ve tried to tell him, “Trust me, you don’t want THOSE raspberries.”  He can’t hear me through the screeches.

Some days, when I notice that silence pervade the house—the shhhhh that tells me my two year old just got another bright idea, I just want to pretend I don’t know that something somewhere in my home is going awry.  Sometimes it is just so tempting to stay exactly where I am— folding laundry, or going to the bathroom, or reorganizing the clothes my kids have grown into or out of— in peaceful oblivious bliss.

It takes everything I’ve got to put down the clothes and walk into the kitchen where I know I am bound to find something that from my point of view requires a serious change of direction and from his point of view a full throttle scream.

I was standing in line in the grocery store yesterday when my son let one rip (because he couldn’t take they toy candy truck with him).  “Good one,” the cashier in the next line said with a big smile.

“Thank you,” I replied with a proud little bow.  “My husband and I do that all the time at home.”