Because when you hit a theme, might as well motif the darned household to within an inch of its life.
I should preface by saying my child is friggin' amazing. By her teacher's account, Chaya reads more than any other child she's ever seen. She tells amazingly complex and detailed stories about feelings and moods and experiences and ideas. She is creative and daring and so loving. She sings. She loves riding her bike with her daddy. She makes me laugh and my heart double bongo beat with admiration and love...
Ok... so that out of the way...
My child is also insane (I mean 3 and a half). I am thusly insane (I mean proud, so so proud of my independent and deep feeling symphony of feelings and throbbing will and increasingly daunting intellect). The last two weeks, to be fair, she's been sick with both a cold and an irritated stomach, so all of her threeness has been super saturated and extra intense to a mother who is ALSO sick and probably dealing with allergies.
But we may well just have reached "that phase" of threenager that I've mostly seen hints of in the last 7 months. I've been gently informed by the wonderful preschool that is her family that such is likely the case and they're there for us and still love her to pieces.
Sick or no, two was a comparative cake walk held up against three. Three is like Boss Mode compared to sweet little two.
We follow do all the best parenting advice as far as it goes - despite the apparent belief from our childless friends that we live in an information vacuum, hiding in our crepuscular bubble while throwing cake and feces at our simultaneously overcoddled and under-tended little cutie - and it lays the groundwork for long term health and self understanding. It does not insulate us in the moment from some of the intense mood swings and struggles with boundaries. She's three. This is how she's "supposed" to be. We accept. Then we sneak off to corner and "joke" about sending her off to live with her grandmother until she's five and finally gets to ride on that school bus she's been talking about for months. .
Chaya laughs. Cries. Asserts her independence. Screams "no mommy!" Relishes learning her routines and schedules to the point of being quite hysterical if they are thrown off, yet largely uses her knowledge of these routines to protest voraciously any next step in the progression of general musts and shredded parental boundaries we desperately cling to.
Or say the tantrum over the fact that I chose to wear my cool new black pants instead of "SOMETHING ELSE" (probably jeans but she won't say). Everyone's a critic!
Chaya is my just desserts entirely, so I really can't complaint too vociferously. She embodies all the things about me that drive others nuts (in addition to some of my finer qualities to be fair, but that's a different more narcissistic posting). The obdurate contrariness. The dogged and occasionally pointless independent streak. The irreconcilable extremes of outgoing and introverted. They sheer vague mystery. The emotional complexity. The obsession with the future in a manner that almost fully overrides the present (no, no we can't enjoy the current book because mommy will not be reading another book beyond the two remaining). The tendency to trail off mid-sentence so nobody can hear the important part...
Yeah, I know. I apologize world. But see aforementioned positive traits. Plus I've stopped shoving oranges into people faces and saying "I ORANGE YOUR EYE" so let's not say I haven't learned anything!
In more directly transferable ways, I've literally been this raging crazy irrational creature rolling around on the floor and laughing hysterically while speaking in tongues. More like in my twenties when, say, I decided it would be a great idea to kill off a bottle of triple sec in my roommate's bedroom while dressed in a tutu and a bright pink Goodwill shirt with a GIANT heart on it... giggling and stacking all the books on top of each other into some kind of tower... while my roommate came home from work looking bemused to perplexed at my sing songy greetings from under a blanket.
I exaggerate re both of us. I love my kiddo. But if we were even 10% less likely to be moving in the next handful of months a few days like the last week would have me begging for a job about now (horror of horrors that all those logistics still strike in my heart). All this compassion and patience and tending to myself is either pushing me into saintly enlightenment or the madhouse.
Incidentally if you are not a regular caregiver of the marvelous monster, you might think I am spewing hyperbole. And I'm not saying you're wrong. She's very fun and sweet and a little shy with the non-caregivers. I should be flattered all she saves for her inner circle, at the very center of which stand I (with mittens shoved in my butt pockets by a little gremlin).
Real take away. Kids are great. Kids are vivid. Sometimes they're kind of exhausting!
A year ago, being away from my kiddo felt like losing a kidney. Now I'm like "you know, honey, that semi-spontaneous trip I just decided to take across country after 4ish years of fighting absolutely every travel opportunity... uh Chaya doesn't have to come. Like at all. You can come but... no, I'm pretty much sitting here fantasizing about being trapped in a large metal coffin hurtling through the skies in a cramped semi-seat next to strangers while she explains to you that she cannot eat at dinner time and will not sleep at bed time and that the way you executed that exact thing she just sobbingly requested was an affront against humanity. Have fun!! I, uh, think I'll catch that flight back the following Monday. Maybe??"
For sure I love my family. And I miss them even when they're out for the day. Half a day. I blithely inflict myself on family outings when I'm not even entirely wanted (NO MOMMMMMY!!!! MOMMY GO MAKE EGG!!). Working on the space thing - granting and taking. Because I have Stockholm syndrome I guess. Or it's less taxing when you can share the load with the suddenly far more interesting parent perhaps. But the distance I never imagined I'd crave... it has been craved.
And well the future holds a few momentary escapes. May in Washington DC. June in Northampton... Like childless for weekends at a time. Possibly just myself minus the fifty pounds of accessory baggage involved processing the needs of a 3.5 year old. It's gonna be trippy (two of them to be exact). Followed by a bunch of family trips. Well earned, well earned.
But...
Well...
Then there's April ... FIRST preschool break the first week. If that doesn't kill me, my mom AND my husband disappear on separate trips simultaneously leaving Chaya's mommy on 24/7 call without the expected backup. If I survive to Passover/Easter, it shall truly be a miracle worthy of celebration.
Hopefully her cold will be cleared up by then. Though by odds that's just long enough for her to catch the next one and enter a whole new developmental stage of self-discovery, independence and ORANGEING PEOPLE IN THE EYE!
Wish me luck!
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