Unleashed

My son is the light of my life.  He is my pride and joy.  I never knew it was possible to be so proud of someone and to love someone so much until he was born.

That said, some days he makes me think that I’m going to end up in a crazy house before he turns 3 (he’s 2 now).  I have heard everyone my whole life talk about kids and their “terrible twos,” but I’m starting to think my kid takes it to another level.

I’ve gotten to the point where I HATE going in public with him.  HATE IT.  He listens to me about like this stapler sitting on my desk listens to me.  And in case you’re not sure how well a stapler listens to someone, IT DOESN’T.  Only it has an excuse.  It’s not alive and doesn’t have ears.  In Caden’s case, he has perfect hearing and cognition, he just CHOOSES not to listen to me.  In fact, he ignores me so I’m confident that when I talk he hears Charlie Brown’s teacher.  “Caden, don’t wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wahhh!”  That’s what he hears.

He is getting to the point where he doesn’t want to sit in the high chairs in the restaurants anymore.  When he even SEES the high chair being brought to the table from across the room he starts saying “no.”  Then when we start to put him in it, he screams and starts flopping around.  So then you almost drop him in the floor and everybody in the restaurant is looking at you like, what the heck?  So the last time we went out to eat we had to put him in a booster seat.  That went well.  NOT!  So now he has nothing to keep him in place because those stupid booster seats are just like plastic boxes to elevate you.  That’s it.  So he wouldn’t sit down on it.  He wanted to sit on the booth.  Ok fine, sit on the booth seat.  That lasted about 3 seconds.  Then he was jumping up and down in the seat.  After a few attempts of trying to get him to sit down and failing, I just let him jump.  At least he was being quiet and there was no one in the booth behind us to feel him jumping.  Then he starts trying to climb under the table and put his feet on the walls.  Ummm no.  That’s NOT acceptable.  So I pop his leg a few times.  He doesn’t care.  When I pop him it’s like nothing even happened.  He doesn’t even pause for a second and PRETEND to cry or make a pouty face.  Long story short, we won’t be going out to eat with him until he’s 15.

He’s got so much freaking energy it’s unreal.  It’s like he’s the son of the freaking Energizer Bunny.  I wish I could find those dang batteries and remove them sometimes!

I always said I would never put a leash on my kid like those moms you see walking around the mall, but I shamefully have to admit that I did try it once.  ONCE.  That’s all it took for me to realize that my child was not having it lol.  We were at the beach and knowing my son already, I knew that he would not be afraid of the water and he would run to it and that scared me.  So I bought one of those stupid leashes to ease my own fears of him being sucked out to sea.  We got to the beach that first day and I put that thing on him and he screamed like I was killing him.  Even over the loud crashing waves, everyone on the beach for 5 miles could probably hear him and most of them turned around and looked to see what was going on.  Then he immediately flung himself down into the sand and started throwing a rolling around, limb flailing fit.  Needless to say, the leash came off and we had to chase his chubby little butt all over the beach that day.  So I made a few notes to myself that day.  Number 1, do not take a toddler to the beach.  Number 2, don’t use those stupid leashes.  Number 3, I am really out of shape.

I love him to death.  This is a fact.  And I don’t want to wish the time away for him to grow up and calm down, but good grief!  Am I the only one with a heathen child?  It sure feels that way lol.