I freely admit it.

Today I was that mom and my daughter was that kid.

You see, my toddler has taken to spending three or four hours of the night awake.  Sometimes screeching, sometimes whining, sometimes just laying there.

I have no idea why.  And yes, I’ve tried pretty much everything to get it to stop.

Nothing works.

Anyhoo, everyone knows that when a toddler isn’t sleeping, that means mama isn’t sleeping either.

So even though I briefly pondered not taking my son to his early morning Spanish class, I chastised myself into packing us all into the minivan.

The class is an hour, and we live fifteen minutes away, so I figured daughter and I would stay and play in the play area set up for younger siblings in the lobby.  And hey, maybe she would make some new friends!

Ha.

I don’t know if it was because she was a bit tired herself, but my daughter managed to terrorize the entire population of the play area.  Yeah 18 month old kid, you thought you had that chair.  Not according to my daughter, who actually sat down in the chair behind you and pushed you off.

She also dumped an entire box of Duplos on the floor, and then decided they didn’t belong in the play area and ran to put them out in the hallway.

She grabbed things out of other people’s hands just because she wanted them for that nanosecond, even though she had cared less about them when they were on the ground.

She threw a block at someone.

She attempted to bite another child’s banana.  Which was in his hands at the time.

The coup de grace was when she dumped an entire bucket of crayons onto the table, and of course eventually the floor, which four other children had managed not to do.

Commence the hideous, glass-breaking shrieking when I decided we needed to take a little walk outside.

Ditto when I strapped her into the car seat and on the entire ride home.

Yes, I know it’s just a phase and she will eventually get better, it just seems like the bad phases last a hell of a lot longer than the good ones.

It seems that my kids have it a little too good.

In my quest to provide my children with a good life, I have inadvertently given my son a sense of entitlement.

Mama isn’t pleased.

We drive nice (but not outlandishly nice) cars, we have a comfortable home in a wonderful neighborhood.  Our city has good schools, abundant and well-maintained parks, and potholes exist for a short time, if at all.  There is no open homeless population, no graffiti, no run-down areas. 

In fact, I was trying to think of the grittiest thing my son has ever seen, and that probably would be graffiti scrawled on the walls of the freeway, far-removed from his surroundings.  If he has even seen it, since he is probably too busy watching movies.

And so unwittingly, I have caused my son to score a big zero in the empathy department for people who are less well-off than we are.  Also, a nature of such laziness and unwillingness to work that it trumps even mine, which is saying a LOT.

I have tried to inform him through various media of how good his life is, and how there are thousands of children who would trade with him in a heartbeat if it meant all they had to to was clean their room, do their school work, and weed the yards.  We’ve donated old toys and clothes together.   We’ve talked about his attitude at great length.

And yet, when I told him that I thought he was old enough to go out and perform some volunteer work, he actually started to cry.  TO CRY, I kid you not.  Granted, he is an emotional child, but I truly had to restrain myself from smacking him upside the head.  He said it was embarrassing.  I told him that there was nothing embarrassing about helping people less fortunate than you, and ordered him out of my sight before I did indeed smack him upside the head.

So, I’ve been scouting out sites for youth volunteerism, and to be honest, there isn’t a whole lot for kids his age.  I don’t want this to be a one-off experience, I want to commit to an organization and make this part of his routine. 

Any thoughts on some good volunteer jobs for nine year olds?  Or how to combat the whole entitlement things?

Maybe a smack upside the head?

As you may already know, last week Gallup published the results of this survey, which showed that if Americans were to only have one child, 40% would prefer a boy.  28% preferred a girl, and 26% stated that it didn’t matter.

So while not quite a majority, still quite a big differential going on there.

Is it the whole “girls can get pregnant” thing?  Would people rather be the parent of the impregnator rather than the impregnatee?

Is it a financial thing, where people seem to think boys are cheaper to raise? 

Perhaps they are concerned about passing on the family name.

Or is it a flat-out gender bias?

What do you think?

And just a side note, the two lads featured up there in the picture come courtesy of Marie Osmond. 

I think they will haunt my dreams.  And I didn’t want to be the only person having nightmares, so I had to share.

You’re welcome.

Back when I was convinced that I was going to be the parent of only one child, it was easy to look back upon the toddler years with a certain wistfulness. 

Yeah, now that I’ve got another one, I promise I will never look back on the following with any sort of longing whatsoever:

-Diapers.

-The screaming meltdowns.  Not that there aren’t tantrums later on, but at least they aren’t 100% screaming.

-Which leads to the next one, the lack of clear communication.  Because pointing and grunts ain’t cutting it.

-Weaning.

-The whole “learn to feed yourself” ordeal and the ensuing havoc wreaked upon my walls and floors.

-Napping.  Not that I dislike napping per se, but it tends to break up the day into inconvenient chunks, especially with an older sibling in the mix.

-The whole process leading up to the napping, which is anything but restful.

–Teething.  My God, the teething.  The sleeping hours I have lost, with the youngest being the largest offender, have no doubt shaved years off my life.

When my daughter was an infant, she was a constant babbler. All kinds of consonants, vowels, and syllables came out of her mouth, I even have videotaped proof!  I smugly congratulated myself on my obviously superior parenting skillz.

Everyone, including myself, was CERTAIN that my daughter would be an early talker. Family legend has it that my sister was speaking in sentences by the age of one, and I secretly harbored the belief that my daughter would be right there.

You see, much angst was visited upon us as my son was a late talker.   He was our firstborn, we didn’t know any better. At eighteen months he said “Mama,” “Dada,” and “Uh-oh.” And that was it for quite a while.  I think he began truly stringing words together at around age two, and he completely bypassed the baby talk phase, with every word crisp and enunciated as could be.

So when my daughter’s first birthday passed with nary a word in her speaking arsenal, I didn’t think too much of it.

I mean, she was constantly being spoken to, if not by myself, then by her brother or her father.  Everything was described for her, every action explained, every object given a name.

So I figured the talking was just right around the corner.

Silent Bob, as I call her, had other plans.

Those plans include giving a bloodcurdling shriek when I don’t understand exactly what her grunting means, or what object she is pointing to.  She knows a phone is for talking, as she holds it up to her ear, but anyone foolish enough to try and converse with her is only rewarded with some heavy breathing a la Darth Vader.

So as of nineteen months my daughter has a vocabulary of absolutely zero words.

Not mama, or dada, or brother, or hi or bye or anything at all.

Sure she says things that could possiblby be words, but they are applied in a completely random way and I would be fooling myself if I thought she was really saying anything.

I’ve done some research and it seems that a tendency toward late talking can be genetically influenced, as my husband didn’t talk until he was almost three(!) and so my children apparently come by it honestly.

I know that years down the road I will be standing there, wishing she would stop talking for just a nanosecond so someone else can get a word in edgewise, but damn if it isn’t annoying.

46% of you plan on staying with relatives for your summer vacation, and as long as you can stand each other at the end of the week, then all is good.  Unfortunately, 28% don’t know what vacation I’m referring to, and 7% are doing the staycation thang.  17% are going somewhere fantastic, aaaand we are all jealous of you.  Er, “we” meaning perhaps just me.

Yesterday at Barnes & Noble, I bought the Munchkin about fifty bucks worth of books.  I’m all for borrowing from the library, which we do a LOT, but for certain series which I know he likes, I tend to buy them for him so that he can maintain a nice personal library.  He’s a big re-reader, and I don’t ever consider buying books for him a waste of money.  His sister, on the other hand, is a gleeful destroyer of books, so right now she is dealing will all hand-me-downs and whichever books my family has been unwise enough to purchase for her.

The Munchkin recently went out to dinner with his grandparents (my parents) and when they came back, it was remarked upon by my mother than my son resembled a hungry wolf while eating his spaghetti and meatballs.

And here I thought it was a problem confined just to our house. 

Er, at least I guess I was hoping that like many other fairly undesirable behaviors, when out with other people, kids tend to put on their best behavior.

So either my son’s table manners are horrendous, or I am immersed in some very deep waters of denial.

You see, it is true that for some reason, my son will lower his head down to his plate and not so much lift his fork to his mouth, but rather shovel in whatever food he has on there.  He is also a very sloppy eater, leaving a ring of detritus around his plate. He is also not what you would describe as a delicate chewer.

It isn’t very pleasant, really.

I have no idea where he gets this from.

Goodness knows I have called him out on his eating habits many a time.  I tell him to slow down, to lift his fork all the way up to his face, and to be careful with his food.

Glinda, meet brick wall. I have no doubt my admonishments sound exactly like the teacher’s voice in the Peanuts,  “Muwaaaah, wuaaaaah, wuaaaha, wua, muwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.”

Is this a typical 8 year old boy thing?  Or will my son be shunned from dining with people other than his family?  Have people secretly been pointing and laughing at him every time we go out to eat?

In his defense, though, there is NO graceful way to eat spaghetti.

Why can my son remember dozens of complicated video game instructions/executions but cannot remember to hang up his towel?

Why does it take him a half hour to get dressed to go get a haircut, but 10 seconds when a friend is knocking on the door to play?

Speaking of getting dressed, why does he wear pants and a long sleeved shirt when it is hot and shorts, flip-flops, and a tee when it is freezing outside?

How is it that he still cannot understand the concept of play clothes vs. good clothes and adjust accordingly?

He is capable of sitting for long periods of time to watch television, but must be reminded at least four times a week to plant his butt on the chair when he eats at the table.

When did he begin thinking that having combed hair was the height of uncoolness?

Or that being told to brush his teeth was not merely a suggestion?

Why is it when he wants something done it has to be this instant, but when I want something done I’m told, ”Mo-oom, it’s not the end of the world, you know.”

Sigh.

At least eight more years of this, you say?