The Devil(ish) Wears Oshkosh

Okay, I don’t want to sound harsh and actually refer to my spawn as “devilish” but honestly, sometimes I have no idea who has taken over his body. He screams, he throws things (big, hard things, too, like bikes and toy vacuum cleaners and stuff) and slaps. Were it not for all the singing and counting he engages in, I would wonder if we were sending him not to preschool but to a cleverly-disguised street-training gangsta-camp. The other day when he launched into a rehearsal of his new tactics, we managed to remain calm while he systematically emptied the living room simply by throwing an object so that promptly “went bye-bye” per Mommy and Daddymatic’s rules. But then Daddy kind of lost it when D slapped me, and I kind of lost it when putting the child into time-out appeared to have no measureable effect save inspiring great mirth, and finally, Daddymatic concluded that we just had to “save him from himself.” Or from us. Or something.

We decided he was tired, and though he insisted he wasn’t and that the clear solution to all our problems was for me to read his new favorite “fluffy” book to him a half-dozen times.

But even six times is never enough, so I finally turned his light off despite much protest and within minutes, his body was limp with sleep in my arms.

And I wish I could say that all these tender thoughts about him rushed back once he was asleep, but dude, I was so stressed and tired that all I could think as I flopped on the couch and turned on the monitor was “Well, that didn’t kill anyone.”