Three Years of Menace

The Red Menace is turning three next week. Stunning. In some ways it feels like dog years - that she should be turning 21 and getting ready to graduate from some sort of shady Eastern Bloc university that specializes in yellowcake and villainy, or maybe living in a halfway house in an effort to reduce the likelihood of recidivism. In other ways, as these things inevitably go with children, it seems like only yesterday that I was lying about not being in labor so JHP would take me to breakfast at Goldberg's before we went to the hospital for my scheduled doctors appointment (in my defense, Goldberg's home fries with cheese, hold the peppers, are totally worth it. Though mark my words that I will one day meet my maker in that parking lot...that place is a minefield of ninety-year-old drivers). As much as I have enjoyed so much of these first years of her life I'm not sad to be moving on. I feel a bit guilty about that since I know I "should" be mourning the transition from toddlerhood - I certainly did with AD, I wanted to bonsai her and keep her right in that moment - but at the same time I'm really looking forward to living with someone who possesses reason and would possibly even use good-ish judgement. As things stand now, we're dealing with someone who's kind of like the Swiss - you think she's all rosy-cheeked and harmless, but give it some time and you'll discover the institutional duplicity and financial irregularities. I'm not saying she's harboring looted Nazi gold but trying to force my wallet through the u-bend in the toilet is still not cool, kid. Not cool at all.

While we're on the subject of the toilet I would like to request that we establish some sort of signing day for potty training. Enough with the hemming and hawing already, let's commit. When AD decided she was done with the Pull-ups, that was it, case closed; with the RM we're talking a liturgical year. And it's not like she doesn't know what she's doing. She knows, and she holds her power over me like the Sword of Damocles. The latest: she got through her whole school day today perfectly - not a single accident. The whole way home I'm telling her how proud I am of her, what a big girl she is, etc., then as I am in the process of unlocking the front door she looks up at me and says, apropos of nothing, "ELISE YOU JUST MAKE ME SO MAD. I AM TEE-TEEING." and proceeds to enthusiastically wet her pants. Excellent. My takeaway from this experience is twofold: remain ever vigilant in all things RM, and if she's going to end up being some sort of yellow discipline dominatrix we are so not wasting money on private school.

All complaints aside, I've also been thinking a lot this week about how remarkable it is that we even have her. It was a piece of cake getting pregnant with AD, that kid was a $12 bottle of wine (or two), but we apparently had to really want it when it came to the RM. She finally surfaced after years of infertility treatments that were not really all that fun. For me, anyway. JHP just had to grab a bunch of dirty magazines and aim for the cup; take away the cup and that's just recreation. After all was said and done and I was finally pregnant for keeps, we figured out that the RM was our 31st embryo; this amazes me. Without all the frustrating disappointments and sadness we would never have gotten to her in the queue. Sure, we might have a different kid, maybe even one that doesn't lick hubcaps or eat smashed grapes off of the floor at Publix, but God forbid we might have also had a boring one. This is what I try to comfort myself with when I'm fishing an earring out of her nostril, or cleaning buttprints off the sunroom windows. Sometimes it works.