Bull In A China Shop

For all Gods blessings in my life, this wasn't how I pictured closing out my twenties. Not in any dramatic WOE IS ME way. I am happy, fulfilled, challenged, grateful and blessed. I have an awesome, hardworking, caring, dedicated husband. I have a safe and warm house, filled with lots of love. I have two awesome little boys that are my EVERYTHING. I live to smell them, hold them, hear them, teach them, this list could go on forever, I won't bore you. I am a parent, my kids rock.

So what I'm getting at is this, I NEVER pictured being a mother to boys. It it insane really. I mean you would think that I'd at least have considered the possibility since they are, I don't know, HALF THE POPULATION. I came from all girls, my mom came from all girls, my dad loved being a dad of all girls. We were just a girl family. We were the kind of girl family that played sports, did yard work and built things, so I'm no fish out of water over here in Boyland but...I am firmly encamped in Boyland.

So one of the things I never pictured having to deal with is how to keep my children from killing one another. Sure with girls there are some fights. There are some accidents where someone gets hurt. There are some, pushes, hits, pinches, that must be addressed. But on a whole raising girls, there is a whole lot less of the type of "fighting" or "playing" that can land someone in the hospital.

We are only at the beginning of this brother vs. brother roller coaster. But it feels like I have to maintain a constant vigilance, because J has begun taking MUCH to big an interest in his brother. Not like a "Good morning brother, how are you? Would you like to watch me play with my trains?" kind of interest. More like a, "Imma wrestle brother. Imma ride on brother's back. Imma shove leaves into brother's face, Imma feed brother my almonds," kind of interest.  J just doesn't seem to understand that his 3 month old brother doesn't wrestle or give horseback rides, and shouldn't eat leaves or TREE NUTS.

Having a newborn in a house with a three year old is like having a bull in a china shop, except the china shop is ACTUALLY YOUR BABY. 
I think this is why F immediately rolls to his stomach when he is on the ground, why he is trying to crawl already. What we think of as determined, adorable, albeit agonizingly slow army crawling, is really just a desperate attempt to escape.

No amount of parenting, gentle correcting, conjoling, pleading, compromising, bribing, or punishing seems to make a difference here. I am hesitant to limit brother to brother contact but that feels like the logic next step. I don't want F getting hurt. So far, thank God he hasn't, but at this point it is possible.

TOO COOL TO "LISTEN" NOW MOM

J isn't particularly aggressive or anything, but he is STUBBORN. I think it is his stubborness that drives most of his unwanted behavior toward his brother. He knows we don't like it, so he does it for attention. I tell you what man, three is a challenge. I am 14 days in people, and there ain't no turning back.

TERRIBLE TWOS? Lies. It must be evolution or something because at some point since the dawn of man the Terrible Twos shifted to Terrible Threes, and no has bothered to correct it. The threes are MUCH worse than the twos. Experienced parents will almost always support this claim.  Parents of two year olds, myself included, tend to think they have an angel child when they breeze through the first nine months of their child's second year. I am sorry to tell you, shit hits the fan much closer to three. You have not escaped your brief stay in hell. Someone just gave you the wrong dates, sweetheart.

 Let's just stop this nonsense shall we? Call a joint meeting of the Big Six,  pass a resolution, whatevs. Just so that innocent parents don't feel like a thief in the night came and stole way their sweet little angel and replaced him with a mini dictator. I make a motion to BANISH the Terrible Twos from our tongues and replace it with the Terrible Threes. We are evolving or devolving, most assuredly, it's one of the two. It's definitely a sign of the times. 

"Stop Slappin' Bees Son!"

J developed a habit of slapping bees this summer. The first time he did it on the playground, he slapped a bee into the slide and crushed it. I admonished him NEVER EVER to do that again.

"NEVER SLAP A BEE SON. It will sting you! You'll cry!"

This lesson, WHOOSH, right over head. Not a week went by before he crushed a bee against my car. Bam!

"I got you bee!" He squealed with delight and complete ignorance.

"J! Do not SLAP bees son!"

"Imma slap beeeeeeeeees mama! I got you bee!" 

Pride comes before the fall people. Pride before the fall. Lessons learned the hard way have a way of sticking. From his gleeful declaration I could tell no amount of admonishing was going to work.

A week or so goes by and then on a nice walk at Parker Mill. Lindsey, J, and I encounter a swarm of bees by the river, A SWARM. Listen, I was nine when My Girl came out. I lost my shite when Thomas J died.

My J gets to stompin'. He's fixin' to get him a bee. (My Gram would say.)

No nooooo and no.

Do not stomp on, near, or around a swarm of bees. We were two women with a newborn and a child and we were running.  This wasn't the time to let J learn the hard way. We are grown ass women. We don't trifle with bees.

So the summer rolls on and the bees are getting more aggressive, but so is J. He gets another one at the park. He gets one at the apple orchard, crushes it right against the little bench we are sitting on enjoying our cider mill donuts. Since I wasn't done with my donut, and I have heard bees can sting posthumously, I broke a little twig off and let him examine the bee with it.

THIS ABOUT SUMS IT UP.

He was very proud and rattled off a little,  "I got you bee" tune. He wanted to take bee home and show daddy, so wrap we it in a napkin and stored it in the donut bag. At this point I'm starting to feel a little pride in his bee slapping abilities. I wasn't encouraging it, but by the fifth or so kill my strict admonishing had turned into a slightly exasperated,

"Stop slappin' bees son!"

The day of reckoning came early last month. After a long beautiful day of playing and hiking, and making new friends, we were packing up the car to head home. I picked J up to say our goodbyes and had turned for the car when a bee flew between us. This was an end of the year bee, the kind of bee that will buzz around, all up in your grill. I turned away from the bee but not fast enough for Sir Speedy Hands.

Before I knew it, J had slapped the bee into his cheek. I immediately ran for the grass to lay him down. I was SURE that he could not have performed that action without consequence, but there was none of the crying and carry on I would expect from a child who had just SQUASHED a bee INTO his cheek. I peeled back his hand to reveal little red dot.

"J are you okay? Did the bee sting you? Can you hear me?" I asked fearing he maybe in toddler shock.

A slow smile spread across his face. The red blotch spreading up his cheek had reached the underside of his shining brown eyes.

"Bee got me Mama! Bee got me!...I got you bee!" He said.

Wait, this was supposed to be the moment the lesson sank in. There was no crying. Sinking in, it was not. I could tell the lesson was still floating somewhere in the stratosphere. After a summer of slapping bees, the bees were supposed to have won. J still looked for bees to slap through October, but as it got colder they got harder and harder to find. As near as I can figure, the score for the summer was J- 5 Bees-1.

It's November now so all the bees are long gone. Hopefully this will all blow over by next summer, and he will develop a proper respect for bees. Even then, "stop slappin' bees" will be in my vocabulary. You can use it too. It is a flexible phrase used in place of "don't tempt fate." I promise if you use it you'll sound cool.