Tell me lies, tell me, tell me lies…

Right now, it’s Sunday afternoon, I’m working on The Internets and John is watching football. It’s relatively quiet, because Braden is taking a nap. I actually just made John turn down the TV so that B wouldn’t wake up early.

That’s right. I do not want to see my kid sooner rather than later right this minute.

I miss my cute kid when he’s sleeping, but I DO NOT miss the screaming and tantrums. Helllloooo, he has been into the terrible 2′s since he was about 17 months old.
Now that his actual 2 Year Birthday is about 2 weeks away, he’s ramping it up, BIG time. He has taken to being really angry at the drop of a hat lately. Like how, without notice, he will scream in my face.

He is lucky he is so damn cute. I swear, if he had, like, a second, troll-like head growing out of his neck… or maybe a talking wart in between his eyes? I would definitely keep him locked up under the stairs and feed him bread crumbs.

Okay, okay, that’s not entirely true. I love him too much, and besides, there’s no ‘under the stairs’ place here, so he’d have to just go in the closet. And he’s become far too wise for that – every time I pick him up and head towards the closet now, he screams and kicks and bites me until I drop him. Damn quick learning. I mean, I swear I’m only taking him over there to get his jacket so we can go outside. (shut up, it’s not hot here, shhh.)

The thing is – Braden has just entered a phase where he is REALLY FUN to be around! He says so much now (and, HAI! we can understand him!) and he’s funny. He dances around, makes cute jokes, and does amazing things. Did you see my video brag on him? Oh, you missed it? Well here’s a new one!

(By the way, feel free to tell me I’m a show-offing bitch, because I absolutely know I am. I never meant for that to happen, really, but F It. I’m proud of him! Neener.)

He knows all his letters, though “J” confuses him, and he knows 1-9, but “7″ catches him off base. Clearly “J7″ is his nemesis. And colors! Green, red, blue, yellow, orange, purple, pink, white, and black. Is he a genius? I hope so. I want him to get a job soon and start contributing to the family income.

Anyway, the point is that he is highly entertaining and much easier to get along with WHEN HE’S NOT BEING AN ASSFACE.

That’s the other thing – he is spending significant amounts of time being AN ASSFACE. And he has really, really elevated his level of Assfacieness. It’s the kind of stuff that makes you want to rake your fingernails down your face. Know how some things make you want to do that?

Never? Hm. Really? Ok, let’s just move on and pretend I didn’t say that.

What I want to know is, how long does this “I’m A Super Effing Brat” stage last? (And God Help You if you tell me, “Oh, Lotus, mine is 16 and he never stopped being AN ASSFACE!” because I just might hunt you down and cut you.)

In other words? LIE TO ME.

TELL ME LIES. SWEET.LITTLE.LIES.

I only wanted to crawl in a hole and die for a little while.

Eating out.

Say those words to me and I will likely just *blink” and give you a look of, “Whaaaaaa?” We didn’t eat out much once Braden was born. A few times, we took him with us, snuggled into his carseat/carrier. But most of the time, we stayed at home, and this was due to the fact that we couldn’t afford restaurant food. If we could, we’d have done it constantly, because, Hello? Cooking on zero hours of sleep? Uh, how about no? And besides, we’re practically Professional Quality Gluttons. Facehole Cramming is our Xtreme Sport of choice, you could say.

As Braden got older, money wasn’t the only thing stopping us from taking him out. Even once he got past his colic (a period I like to call “OH HOLY EFF”), I was nervous about how he would act. See, I was once that young and stupid (childless) asshole who got really pissed off when there was a screaming baby in the restaurant. So now, I intuit that perspective – I imagine all the people in the room who are going to be pissed off at me and my kid. And I translate that into how many people I’m going to have to admit, in front of judge and jury, to killing with my bare hands in a homicidal rage. You know, if they say anything. Or even make a face I interpret as displeasure aimed in our general direction. Killing so many and going to prison would be quite unfortunate.  I would not make a good prison bitch.  I’m too mouthy.

When Braden was about 6.5 months old, at the beginning of April 2007, we were living in an apartment, (*coughDUMPcough*) and our craptastic upstairs neighbors (including the Spawn of Mr. Ed, who I’ve mentioned here) moved out, and left the washer hookup faucet turned on, flooding their apartment and ours. The fix was to pull up our carpet, exposing all the dust, dirt, and fleek (a word I just made up for ‘unidentified disgusting crud’) lying beneath it, and direct a mega-powered-fan under the wet parts to dry them out. The result was that the air in our entire apartment got peppered with all the dirt that had ever settled into the carpet. Yummmmmm. So we got out of there and went out to dinner.

Braden was quite lovely, actually. The most eventful thing he did was try to eat the table.

And then barf on it.

Not long after that he continued to morph into a more mobile version of Hell Child, and once again, we avoided eating out.  All he wanted to do was get.all.ovah.evah-thang.  We held out. Until October.

That is when “The Long Horn Incident” occurred. We try not to remember The Incident. It is not spoken of around here. When it is clear that we are both thinking about it, we just exchange a look and shudder. And we hope that anyone at that Long Horn restaurant will try to forgive us, and that their nightmares are not recurring. THAT dinner became take-out as quickly as possible.

So, you might have thought us rather crazy when we decided to give it a go again on Tuesday night. But with John home for only 3 days, and me just really wanting to have a little fun… we decided to take a chance. And out we went for dinner.

Ruby Tuesdays was the target, er, eatery we chose. Close to our home in case we needed to get the hell out of dodge and home with hot food in a hurry.  We entered with our Smiley Faces on and pretended like we thought it was going to be GREAT!

We got seated. Braden lunged for the salt and pepper, but I quickly distracted him with a toy truck. (Damn, I’m goooood.)  That worked for about 2 seconds. So did the book, and the crayons, and the toy camera.  So, if you do quick math, you will realize that he was good for all of 8 seconds into the event.

Then the screaming started.  The Open Mouthed Red Faced Screaming Of Death To All.

And the thrashing.  And gnashing of teeth.

Oh, and Braden was also causing a scene.

After a brief jaunt outside with him, John and Braden returned.  There was one more screaming episode, which I somehow dampened with words like, “Oh my goodness, you’re loud, look at these beautiful crayons!” (And dude, I acted like they were THE most BEAUTIFUL crayons you have EVAH SEEN.  He must have fallen for it.)

Then he was good.  For the whole rest of the meal!  Astonished were we!  We couldn’t even say it out loud, though we almost did several times.  Then we’d stop cold, laugh, and knock on the table.

People, it was magnificent.  I ate a whole meal at a restaurant, it was delicious, and my son wasn’t such a turdface that we had to leave.

Shit, I might not need therapy after all!

Oh yeah, I posted a video of myself pulling my pants down on The Internet yesterday.

Nevermind.

Till death do us part. Or bubble baths.

John is home! He arrived home Sunday afternoon.

Which is AWESOME because I am officially handing this:

… over to him for the next few days.

(And yes, I know it’s cute on video. I hate you. Shut up. If you want a more realistic effect, make sure your speakers are set to maximum volume. In fact? Make them go to 11.)

And I will be doing this:

Cause I stink.

What are you doing this week?

Is it okay to scream “SHUT UP, JUST SHUT UP!” at someone else’s kid? No? Okay.

I’m glad I didn’t then. 

And, not that I would ever call someone else’s cute little girl of, oh, about 7 or so a immensely annoying little brat, BUT…

The Immensely Annoying Little Brat who lives across and 2 houses up the street from us was literally BEGGING me to come over and apply duct tape to her sweet, adorable little mouth on Thursday evening.

See, Braden and I were in our backyard, hanging out.  We had blown bubbles, he had pretended he was driving his car, then we played with chalk together ["chot!" new word!].  In general, we were enjoying some relaxing down time between dinner and bedtime outside.

Cue the Immensely Annoying Little Brat.

“Ellie!”  “Ellie!”  “Where are you, Ellie?!”

Hm.

“Ellie!!!”  “Ellll-liiiiieeee!!!”  “ELLLLLLLLLIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!!!”

Uh.

“EL-LIE! WHERE ARE YOU, ELLLL-LIEEEEE!?!”

“COME HERE, ELLLLLIIIEEEE, COME HERE!”

She was just standing on her front porch, looking nowhere in general.

I swear to you – her imaginary friend must have run away from her.

“ELLIE…ELLIE… ELLLLLIIIIEEEE!”

Overandoverandoveragain.

“EL-LIE! Fine, Ellie!  Fine!  Run away then, I never want to see you again!”

I tried to ignore it.

“ELLIE, COME HERE ELLLLIIIIEEE!!!”

It got louder and Louder and LOUDER.

With behavior like that, it’s no wonder her imaginary friend ran away from her, really, you know?

And then?  She just started shrieking.  Just standing there.  Shrieking to hear her own voice.

WTH, man?  I was cleaning up chalk and I looked up to see that Braden had climbed up in the hammock and was staring at her.

And suddenly?  He screamed back at her.

She shut up. 

Braden RULES.

You would scream, too, if you had to live with me.

I do the most horrible things to my son.  I do things that make him scream in anger and cry his heart out.

Like taking the potty insert away after he’s peed in it without letting him splash in and play with his pee.

And offering him his play cell-phone back after he handed it to me.

And making sure his gums and teeth don’t rot, by brushing them every night.
Yes, that’s right, the following is the result of just brushing his teeth.

You can only get screamed at so many times for NOT DOING ANYTHING WORTH BEING SCREAMED AT before you feel the need to video document the insanity.  Then, when people who have not seen you in some time ask you why you look as though you’ve aged about 20 years in only 2 years, you can give them the web address for this stuff.

Right after you punch them in the face.

I hope you enjoyed the screaming.  I know I always do!

Screamie McGee

Braden still hasn’t stopped screaming his head off. In fact, he seems to have stepped it up a notch, and added another lovely behavior: The Fake Cry. “Wah-huh, Wah-huh, Wah-huh…*pant, pant, hyperventilate* Wah-huh, Wah-huh, Wah-huh!!!” So, there’s that now, too, along with The Shriek.

We tried and failed miserably at Operation Ignore The Shriek. Because, DUDE. You can’t ignore The Shriek. The Shriek demands your attention! The Shriek calls you to action!

The Shriek? MAKES YOU WANT TO KILL YOURSELF.

Ignore it. Mmm, hm. How do you ignore the fact that you are standing in the kitchen, holding an ice pick up to your temple, and you have no idea how you got there? Huh?

I’ve started time-outs with Braden recently. Oh, wow. THAT is fun. They really seem to diffuse his craptastic behavior for awhile, but that’s after I have to watch him cry about being in time-out. YUCK. And let’s not forget that it’s all about me, so that sucks, right? Hah.

But seriously, the screaming has to go.

I have nightmares where my son’s mouth is fused to my ear, and The Shriek is on a never-ending loop. And there’s blood coming out of my other ear, my eyes have popped out of my face, and my hands are scratching down my cheeks, nails leaving behind long, deep gouges. What? That’s not at all psycho. Stop looking at me like that.

But, does he really need his vocal chords? I mean, kids learn sign language pretty quickly, right???

Of course, he also does some loud things that are really cute… so, hm.

I guess I’ll let him keep them.

For now.

Because I NEVER scream.

Every day when I look at my son, I see how much he is like his Momma… such as how he is so smart, funny, sweet, and cute.  Surely it is not really in the way that he is painfully moody, impatient, and always finds a unique way to be a total, obnoxious pain in the ass.

I am NEVER obnoxious.  (Have you voted for me yet?)

I am certainly NOT a pain in the ass. (Have you voted for me yet???)

So, when Braden developed his latest habit, I decided this must surely be something that he inherited from John.

But, um, you know… John never SCREAMS LIKE A BANSHEE.

That’s right.  Apparently, it is ALL the rage to just shriek your GUTS out randomly throughout the day.  And if you are even slighty displeased with anything ocurring ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, then please, please let out the highest pitched, railing scream you can possibly force your lungs and larynx to emit.  This is, according to Braden (the authority on these things, I’m sure), the Hip and With It thing to do.

In fact, if glass doesn’t break in the next state?

You.Aren’t.Doing.It.Right.

And far be it for me to say that this is ANNOYING THE SNOT OUT OF US, but… well, I have recently been wondering… just how long can you leave duct tape on a one year old child’s mouth and face before it damages the skin?

• The food takes too long to prepare.

 ”Eye-eeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

• The book he’s pushing across the floor doesn’t magically transport him to Disney World.

“ScreeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!”

• Water continues to be H2O.

 ”AAAAHHH-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!”

It’s very difficult to get through even 30 minutes without something happening that causes him to shriek like we are cutting off a toe.  You know, like taking off his clothes, or changing his diaper. 

This is a tiny sample of The Shriek.  It really isn’t his full-on best, or longest sustaining quality… but HEY, he was TIRED, okay?

 

And, really, it just can’t keep going on like this, because, people, I think I might rip my own son’s head off.

So, yesterday (in lieu of grabbing Braden’s face between my hands and screaming, “OH, WHY, SON WHY!?”), I did what any sane person would do.  I sat my Toddler down and said to him,

“Look, Braden.  Mommy is not always, how shall I say this? Good at coping with stressful situations? So, I can certainly understand that sometimes you get frustrated, and you don’t know what to do with all your feelings.  But, really, Son, screaming is not the way to work out your problems.  The next time you feel really upset and tense, and you’re not sure what to do with your frustrations, just do what Mommy does.”

And then I told him what to do.

And now, it’s only a matter of time before he kicks the dog or makes a somewhat sarcastic and snide remark to John.