When you’re tired, stressed out, and pretty much to your breaking point, that’s the exact moment that some invisible force will flip a switch in your two year old and turn them into something between a rabid dog and a demon.
When the dishwasher is broken, the laundry is piled high, four bills you can’t pay arrived on the same day, your mother-in-law has made you crazy for the umpteenth time, you’ve popped sixty-three vitamin C’s trying to fight off the sore throat that you’re sure came from yelling at the kids to stop bickering, there are squirrels in your attic, the neighbor backed into your car, a huge tree limb is hanging precariously over your roof, it’s 104 degrees and you’re a/c is on the fritz, you spilled your twenty dollar bottle of hair color touch up, you’ve been diagnosed with something you can’t pronounce, your other half did something so stupid you can’t believe you ever found him intelligent in the first place, and you’re pretty sure when you looked in the mirror, you saw the beginning of a mustache forming - THAT is the day your previously angelic two year old will decide that compliance is for one year olds. That is the day she will wage an all out war just to see what kind of ammunition you have.
Of course, since she’s had two whole years to observe how other kids do it, all the while quietly deceiving you, she’ll know that the best way to overtake the enemy (that would be you), is with a surprise attack at nightfall. By then she will have already watched you clean up the dinner table, put in a load of laundry, wipe up the floor, help Big Kid with his homework, remove the mess the cat made, put away toys, school papers and clothing, prepare bags for the next morning, pop a few Excedrin, and collapse into a chair. Oh she sees it, the exact moment of your vulnerability, and she knows just how to strike.
She’ll start with something small, letting you think it’s just an insignificant moment of weakness on her part. Perhaps she’ll throw a toy or touch something she’s not supposed to be near. Surely you’ll think a quick reprimand will distract her and she’ll go right back to merrily playing with her baby dolls. But that’s where you’re wrong.
That statement which you thought was going to be a quick reprimand, was really you just taking her bait. She’ll show you who’s boss, alright. She’ll take your reprimand and hit you in the face. When relegated to time-out, she will squirm and push past you with the might of a charging bull. When you return her to her spot and hold her in place, you will swear she’s coated in baby oil because she’ll slip right through your hands again. Determined to keep her in time out until she learns not to hit, you’ll hold her more firmly, to which she will respond with pushing back and throwing herself down with no fear of you letting go and letting her bash her head on the floor. She knows you too well for that.
When your energy is spent, and you carry her off to a confined place for time-out, such as the crib or playpen, that’s when the real fun begins. She’ll try to climb out, jump when you’ve told her to sit, and promise to be good while still in the process of smacking you in the face again.
Before you know it, you’ll have paragraphs of text from every internet page and baby book you’ve ever read, running through your head like a teleprompter, reminding you what you’re supposed to say. But after another ten minutes of battling with her, you’ll start to hear the voices of news anchors, child psychologists, and your long-deceased Aunt Martha telling you to breathe deeply and count to ten before somebody gets seriously hurt.
After you’ve run the gamut of minor annoyance to thoughts you’d never admit to even your closest girlfriend, you start to pray, for your own soul and for her to be stricken with Narcolepsy. Because if she does not have some physical ailment that makes her suddenly fall asleep, you realize that you may just have to shut her door and let her spin around like a wound-up top until she either passes out or declares defeat due to lack of audience.
But then, you look at her and you see this evil little smile that matches the taunting twinkle in her eye and something in you rises up with a second wind. You are the mother after all and you will NOT be defeated.
You begin to craft an ingenious plan that will halt her canons on their axis and blow the match right off her next stick of dynamite. You will so confuse the enemy that though she will flail around, trying to stick to her level of determination, ultimately she will wave the white flag.
And while she sits stewing in her place of confinement, you’ll pour yourself another handful of Excedrin and chase it down with something that will take the edge off, all the while giving the Big Kid a stare that says Don’t Even Try Me.
When they are both finally asleep, you lie in bed with a sense of dread. For you know, you remember from the first kid, this is not the end. This is only the beginning, and from here on out, it’s you against her. You know that somewhere deep within you, you’ve got to pull out the Consistency Card, but with everything else in your life going wrong, you’re not even sure that card still exists. You’re not playing with a full deck, and she knows it. Oh, she knows it. And it’s going to be a very long game.
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