Bubble has been making the most of her last few weeks as a two year-old, leading me to wonder: what is the terminal velocity of
toddlerhood? Where, exactly, does it peak? She doesn't sleep, says no to everything, and is simply not going to use the potty. On a day when I try to confirm that the dead silence
emanating from her room at
naptime means she has fallen asleep, I find instead that she is behind the blinds of her street-facing window facing, standing on the windowsill, pressed against the window, naked from the waist down. "THIS IS NOT AMSTERDAM," I inform her, and peek out to see if there are any witnesses likely to call CPS.
The only thing that makes this any better is the story of my friend, who lived for a while in American Samoa. She was having lunch at the yacht club with a rather
hoity-
toity lady and a man who was running for Lieutenant Governor at the time. Her son was two and was with them. During the meal, a waiter approached and said, "Excuse me ma'am, is that your child?" She said, "No, my child is right..." and looked up to see him standing in the middle of the yacht club, buck naked save for his flip flops. "What could I do?" she tells me. "He was the only red-headed white kid on the island. I put on his clothes and got out of there."
The other day, as Bubble was yet again spending her
naptime sneaking out of her room and getting into trouble, I finally had enough. Every time I got up to waddle my pregnant ass after her, she would run into her room and lock her door before I could get there. Needless to say she has been told on numerous occasions that this is against the rules. I put up the gate; she climbed over it. She has been able to pry the anti-toddler doorknob covers, which I call
doorknobbers, off the doorknobs for a few months now, meaning the only way we can keep her from, say sneaking into her brother's room and vandalizing it, is to lock the door. I had been tempted to duct tape the doorknobbers on for about the same amount of time, but it seemed wrong somehow, like we should just teach her to respect boundaries and not to sneak into the garage. I suppose you could also teach a dog to stay in your yard, but a dog is a dog and it's a hell of a lot easier on everyone if you just put up a fence, at least until the dog is old enough not to go running into traffic, becaus theory and reality diverge violently when dealing with a two year-old.
So I got out this sticky old roll of silver duct tape, so sticky I could barely get it off the roll, put the
doorknobber on, covered the hole in the middle so she couldn't lock the door, and wrapped tape securely around the whole thing so she couldn't possibly pry it off, and finally went to take a long-awaited shower. Twenty minutes later, who should stroll into my room? The only thing I did was provide her with 20 minutes of entertainment as she methodically peeled the tape off.
A couple of says later I was convinced she was asleep during
naptime, only to have her come out and announce that she was
poopy. Unfortunately, nature often does call at that time and keep her from sleeping. I went to change her, only to find that she had neglected to mention that she had already taken off her own diaper and was attempting to flush it herself. The carnage in her room was particularly gruesome, as she had pushed her bed across the room and strewn every object in her room hither and yon. Beyond a few obvious casualties, there was no telling what was contaminated. I am not ashamed to say I wept.
A couple of days after that we were watching a movie in my room. Bubble was at the foot of the bed on the floor where I couldn't see her. She once again announced that she had pooped. I stood up and saw that she was naked from the waist down. This happens quite often lately, with WET diapers. I saw the stained diaper laying on the floor, where it had stealthily been discarded. "WHERE IS THE POOP, BUBBLE? WHAT DID YOU DO WITH IT?" Sensing this was no time for games, she pointed at my bed, where she had placed an orange plastic Halloween candy bucket that she likes to carry her stuff around in. Sure enough, there was her proudly placed turd, the exact size, shape and weight of a baseball. Poop in a pumpkin. That pretty much sums up my week.
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