Memory Lapse

When you have kids it is easy to forget things. Not just stuff like where you put the keys, or what you wore yesterday, or the last time you shaved your legs, or got a haircut, or had a martini. But important things, like how tired you get with a new baby waking you all the time, and how much crawling sucks, and that toddler's say no first because they want to see how much you can tolerate before they utter mama and make your heart melt and you mind forget all of the previous naughtiness.

Like today, Lucy had a rather full diaper and just when I thought it was safe to change her, I was quickly reminded who calls the shots in the diaper department. (She did not hesitate to remind me with one simple, but strongly emphasized giggle.) Or yesterday, I left her in her pack n play to run down and switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer. When I came back upstairs, my uncharacteristically quiet daughter had dumped the contents of my purse into her little bed and was eating the receipts and animal cracker crumbs from the bottom of it. (All she could say about that was 'num num.') Then in the car she tried to bite Rex again because he was eating an apple and she wanted it, even though she can't have her own apple yet. (No witty comments from her this time because I can't translate her screams to mean anything other than 'I'm totally pissed right now.') And the day before that she woke me bright and early at 5 am by using the highly coveted word 'mama' over and over again. (That word had previously crossed those lips maybe once or twice before she wanted to be rescued from her crib.)

What I forgot, was that Rex and Nate had similar antics. I can recall some not so nice stories about how both of those boys treated me poorly and unjustly in their first few years. My memories of the actual event remain, but over time they became funny. I enveloped them in a lovely sugar coating, since they are the treasured stories of their infancy that I want to remember always.


And I will most likely remember these too, I'll paint them in a rosy hue in my mind so I can recall them fondly with Lucy when she is older.


But right now, I can hardly stand it. I want to bash my brains against the wall for being so silly and forgetting how ridiculously deviant and charming my toddlers are. I want to run out and warn every adult of childbearing years to proceed with caution. Perhaps I'll post warnings in the dressing rooms at the local bridal shop. In every one I'll put up a little note that says: yes, everyone is doing it because they are horribly adorable and they look kinda like you and they act kinda like him, but BEWARE of what evil they are capable of.

Yep, that should make them think twice.