When I got pregnant with my second son, somewhere around week 16 he started moving. And once he started moving, he started using my internal organs as punching bags and target practice. I started to wonder if I’d somehow been impregnanted with a child with 6-8 arms and started to call TLC before the ultrasound tech informed me that, no, my son really only had 2 arms and 2 legs.
It doesn’t help that I have no torso and am mostly legs, so that at 5’5″, when I’m pregnant, I look frighteningly like a very chubby daddy long-legs.
At multiple prenatal appointments, he’d kick so violently at the fetal heart-tones doppler that it would go flying out of the nurses hand, across the room. I barely slept for six months, because no matter what position I managed to heave myself into, he’d find something that displeased him about it and kick.
My ribs. My pelvis. My sternum. My liver. My stomach. My kidneys.
My son kicked them all day, every day. All night every fucking night.
By the time he was born, I’d begged my OB for an induction, who must have taken pity on me. He apologized to me when he informed me that I wouldn’t be delivering at my choice of hospitals and glassy eyed, I told him that I would deliver in the back of a Pinto if that was all he would do. I meant it.
Hooked up to the monitors in the hospital, The Daver finally heard his son kick. And kick. And kick. And kick. For 12 hours straight, my son kick at the monitors strapped to my belly, which he found HIGHLY displeasurable, apparently. Dave laughed about it until he fell asleep.
Ass.
Anyway, after Alex was born, he didn’t sleep, and who was surprised? He never slept in utero, so why start now?
Shockingly, though, he also didn’t really move much. Late to crawl (10 months), I was too tired to consult Baby Center (dear Baby Center, I am not pregnant, plz be stopping emailing me) or give much of a shit. I mean, despite my awesome experience in the polo club in college, I am not very coordinated (dear Internet, plz be seeing the time I broke mah toe making a peanut butter sandwich).
When he did crawl, though, he just…took off. No hesitation, just BAM.
Several months later (15 months), late again to walk he just…took off one day. My jaw dropped as my son just started walking. I’d figured he was probably as uncoordinated as I was, but apparently I was wrong, he was like a Jedi or something.
The very next day, I noted that my son was standing there, foot next to a ball and I watched him to see what the hell he was doing. Angrily, he tried to use a single foot to make the ball move, and each time, he fell. Over and over, he stood back up, tried to use that foot to make the ball move and failed. The screams that came out of him made me close up the windows, lest my neighbors call CPS.
Alex was trying to learn to kick a ball.
It took him about an hour but he did it. I don’t know how this child was sprung from my loins, but somehow I have raised a wee jock.
He’s starting soccer soon and I can’t help but wonder if they’re going to look back and forth between me and my athletic son and laugh like I do. Couldn’t blame them, really.
Who the hell breaks their toe making a sandwich?
This was a pre-walking Alex who is already giving me the “you throw like a GIRL, Mom,” look. Which, I mean, I do.
ALEX, however, does NOT throw like a girl, Pranksters.
Don’t know WHERE he came from. Really. I’d say the mailman, but I don’t know if he’s more coordinated than I am.
We were at Target this weekend (also known as My Social Life) (also known as My Boyfriend) buying both groceries and pants for my middle child. The groceries, I should clarify weren’t strictly for Alex, but rather stuff that we could all safely enjoy. Deliciously, even. Especially Uncrustables, which are pretty much heaven in a wee package.
Alas, I digress.
In the children’s section, I happened to come across a shirt for my daughter that I found to be the proper amount of sass-a-frassery AND adorability and as such, I picked it up and exclaimed to Alex, who happened to be in the cart I was pushing (yes, we take two carts)(no we don’t FILL them), “Oh! Look at this cute cupcake shirt for Your Sister!”
Upon examination, Alex said “I want a cupcake shirt for Alex!”
What went through my head was this:
“Oh shit, Dave will kill me. This is a BABY FUCKING BLUE SHIRT with a frilly blue collar. And look at the cupcakes! They’re SPARKLY. I mean, there is not a single doubt that this shirt is for a girl. You couldn’t make this shirt more girly if you tried.”
“But I mean, he’s two years old! How the hell can you possibly tell a two year old that he can’t have a shirt because it’s for a girl? This is probably the most manly two-year old boy ever. His second word was penis. Who gives a fucking shit if he wears girl’s clothes? He’s a baby! HE’S STILL IN DIAPERS. I will CUT someone who looks at him funny for wearing girl’s clothes.”
So, I looked for the shirt in a 2T and I handed it to him. He grabbed it, hugged it and said, “I love you, Cupcake Shirt.”
Dave glared at me for a second before bursting out laughing because really, what the hell can you do? The shirt is pretty fucking cute. I kind of want one in my size.
(yeah, the coloring is off because I messed with the flash by accident)
The shorts, he insisted upon wearing, are actually Mimi’s.
Never one to let an opportunity pass him by, he insisted that his sister wear her cupcake shirt as well. This is exactly why I love kids, even if they poo their pants and teethe on my legs.
I’m always amazed when my kids do something clever. It’s not that I don’t think they’re smart…okay maybe it is. But I don’t really think any kids are smart. Shit, I wasn’t smart as a kid. Unless you call eating an entire tub of frosting with my tongue smart, which you cannot unless you’re a lying liar who lies.
People who are all “my kid is a fucking GENIUS!” make me sort of itchy because it’s very clear that they’re annoying.
Kids aren’t SUPPOSED to be smart because they’re kids. They’re supposed to do dumbass things like jump off the back of the couch onto their heads because it seemed like a good idea and they’re supposed to eat toothpaste because it’s tasty and they’re supposed to annoy the hell out of you by asking you over and over things like “WHERE’S MY HAND?” even though it is VERY CLEARLY attached to their arm.
They’re kids.
So when mine do things that are reasonably smart, I’m all “who the hell ARE you short people?”
But my middle son, the one that I’ve pegged to be a mini-Chris Farley at the ripe age of 2, because he routinely runs into walls on purpose so that he can fall down, only to spring back up and yell “I’M OKAY!!” he appears to have developed some odd habits.
I may have to stop lovingly calling him “Buckethead” and start calling him “The Professor.”
In the past month or so, he’s developed an obsession with two things. Two weird, maybe related, but nonetheless, strange things. Perhaps all of the jumping off the couch onto his head has jangled something loose. Because he now is infatuated with:
1) numbers (specifically the number 0)
This is the second of my children to take a more than passing interest in the planets (my first son could, by Alex’s age, name all 63 of Jupiter’s moons), and before you think that I’m somehow indoctrinating them with my own adoration of cosmology, let me assure you that I am not THAT kind of scientist. I’m a virus kinda girl, myself.
Ben has since grown out of his love of the planets and Alex has fallen headfirst in love all on his own. It’s beyond weird.
So watch out, Carl Sagan. Alex Harks is coming for you.
Just as soon as he gets his diaper changed.
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