Paging Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Parts of me want to capture two-year-old Bertram in a bottle and keep him this way forever. You know where you stand with young Master Bertram at two years of age: the highs are extreme and will manifest in exuberant jumping and running. He will bound into our laps and say, “aw, huggy!” He cannot resist kissing Vivi and saying, “Eyes. Nicely.” That is young Master B shorthand for what we often tell him, “Touch her eyes nicely.”

Also, I know that I’m his mother, but I do believe that Bertram has a great, warm smile. The kind that radiates outward—you can’t help but smile when you see it. I think, for this reason, young Master B has quite the following. Indeed, I often feel like I’m traveling with the tiny blond mayor of our block.

I was particularly charmed by Young Master B’s exuberant happiness to attend his first art class. (It was just him and me as Parental Unit #2 held down the fort with young Mistress Vivian.) I told Bertram that we were going to make art, and he clapped his hands and said, “Yeah art!” He then proceeded to walk on his tippy toes for most of way there, squealing “art!” At the class, we were encouraged to take the paper off the crayon, so that we could use the sides and the tip to make circles and lines. I think Bert’s favorite part of the class involved the star stickers. He hopped around the room, putting the little stars on everything—my neck, the paper, the floor, his shorts. We had a blast.

Yet, with the toddler’s uberbliss also comes the dark underbelly—the extreme anger, frustration, and sadness. In what seems like an instant, young Master B will go from joy to screaming, crying and rolling around on sidewalk like a possessed demon. Of course, I do not want to bottle this part of two-year-old Bertram. No, no this side of Bertram makes me want to run for my liquid friends, Senora Corona and Don Prosecco.

How I wish that these tantrums could be like an aria—Bert alone onstage, feeling his emotional pain, and we the parental units waiting to respond in the audience. Yet, now we have the Vivian Factor, which means Bert’s tantrums can easily set off a high-pitched newborn squawking session. Just imagine old Parental Unit #1 pushing a stroller the size of the Queen Mary down the street with two screaming kids—old women giving her the look that translates to “clearly, you are an awful mother.” That’s fun times, that is.

What strikes me is the intensity of Bertram’s feelings. For example, Bert loves trains, from old-fashioned steam engines to boxy silver subway cars. And, in an effort to not be land locked in our apartment because we have to schlep two kids and the stuff of two, Parental Unit #2 and I have tried to use our weekends to get away from our home base. This means that we take the subway. On the train, Bertram is lovely; he quips along with the computerized voice command to, “Stand clear of the closing doors please.” He likes to watch the lights flicker in the tunnel as the subway rattles along on the tracks.

Once we reach our destination and start to exit the station, I can almost see the pain in Bert’s face, because we are leaving such a fantastic and wondrous thing as the New York City subway. “Train! Train! Aaaaagh!” yells a tearful Young Master B with limbs flailing about and his body jerking against the stroller straps. If I, too, had just discovered trains, I might be similarly enraptured. Oh, but what a drag it is for his parental units to carry his thrashing body away from the station. We must make an offering of yogurt raisins to distract the angry spirit, so that the gleeful boy will return. All the while, Vivian gums the outer rim of her carrier with gusto. I think she must be taking notes.

Brother and Sister

047, originally uploaded by hal(var).

You Betta' Fear the Never Napper

When I first learned that I was pregnant with young Miss Vivi, a fellow mom with kids who were two years apart in age, said to me, “the key to having two kids under age three is preserving everyone’s sleep schedule.” This woman spoke the truth.

Thus, when I manage to get both Vivian and Bertram (formerly known in infancy as the Never Napper) napping at the same time and in the same room, I feel like I have won the lottery. More than that, I want to do cart wheels around the apartment. I am skiing down that mountain holding a York Peppermint Patty! My internal monologue sounds something like this:
Hurrah! Now, I have two hands free! I could take a shower, or write a post on that blog. I could give a book my full attention. I could eat a meal with a fork and a knife.

Once I’ve decided what I will do with this precious pocket of time, the negotiation begins, “Okay, I will take a shower, after I clear the breakfast dishes…oh, and sweep the kitchen floor.” Just as I’ve managed to prep the kitchen for the next round of destruction, and most definitely before I’ve managed to take that shower, I hear the telltale stirrings of young Miss Vivian. The remainder of young Master B’s naptime is then spent nursing young Miss V.

Of course, what I have skipped over is what it takes to put a nursing newborn and the Never Napper down for a nap at the same time. First, I must establish the napping environment: I draw the blackout curtains closed, I turn on the soft tones of lullabies fashioned from The Cure songs of my youth*. Next, I sit in the recliner with Vivian, let her latch, and then, young Master B climbs up in my lap and maybe, if all goes well, he drinks his milk and nods off to slumber land.

Alas, my intrepid Never Napper has many tricks up his sleeve. They include thrashing of the limbs, pointing to items in the room and naming them, singing, asking to read more books, requesting different lullabies, or poking me in the face. When these shenanigans begin, I de-latch Vivi, deposit her in the crib and hope she remains entertained long enough for me to help Bertram get to a sleepy state. At this point, I would be remiss if I did not note that Vivian also has excellent limb thrashing skills.

Back in the recliner, the Never Napper sprawls out on my lap. Perhaps, he thinks he has evaded the nap. But no, Parental Unit #1 will not be thwarted! In an attempt to quiet his body, I encourage him to hold my hand while we rock in the recliner. I urge him to be quiet and to close his eyes over and over again. Timing is of the essence because Vivian’s “eh, eh, eh” sounds can ramp up to full Def-Con 1 level in mere moments. Then, we’ll be back to where we started—with Vivian on the teat and Bert running around the room shouting “purple” or another word that he has newly learned. Is is just me or are these so-called developmental outbursts toddler code for “my Mom is a sucker”?

If all else fails, Parental Unit #1 must drop the A-bomb of parental commands: “It is nap time. Time to lay down, close your eyes and go to sleep.” I then perform a sibling dosey-doe with Vivian going into the Big Boy Bed and Bertram going into the crib. I grab Vivian and we depart. As I shut the door, I hope for the best. Of course, by “best,” I mean only 30 to 40 minutes of the saddest wails that a toddler can muster.

As you can see in the photo, I usually manage to defeat the Never Napper, but it is a tiring process. Why can’t humans evolve to feature an on/off switch that molts off when kids turn 20? I believe that would be so much easier!

*Back in the pathos of my teenage years, when I was pining over some cad, sitting in front of the record player so that I could drop the needle on Boys Don’t Cry over and over again, I never imagined that I would be covered in spit-up and rocking a whiny toddler to sleep.

Smiler

130, originally uploaded by hal(var).

You can't see her smiling in this photo, but after 7 weeks of being alive, young Miss Vivian smiles and coos. Good thing too because as lovely as she is, without some type of emotional reward, I feel like I’m just putting a lil’ larvae to the nippie.