Monster Mine

     A few months ago, around my son's first birthday, I wrote a post entitled Baby Mine.  The post was a tribute to my sweet sunshine baby and a lament over his much too rapid growth.  This post is also dedicated to Ryan, aka the monster formerly known as a baby.  It is dedicated to him in the hopes that someday he will read it and he will understand exactly why it is that my wrinkles run so deep and my head is covered in gray hairs.  He may also come to understand why it is that he has to pay a visit to Blackfoot South (the local mental institution) to see his mother.  This post is also dedicated to mothers of toddlers everywhere.  If you happen to be one of those blessed mothers whose toddlers quietly peruse their board books and stay out of things after one "No", don't talk to me.  I don't want to hear about it.  If, on the other hand, your experience with raising (chasing may be a more apt word here) toddlers makes/made an extended stay at your nearest loony bin seem like an easy out, then we can talk.  We can talk over a giant piece of chocolate cake in a room that is as close to being padded as we can find.
    Since the probability of me sitting down personally with each of you in a padded room over a slice of cake is low, let's just talk here.  Grab some cake if you have it.  Good.  Now lock yourself in your room.  Good.  First, let's talk about point of view.  I am not talking about a broad, abstract meaning of the term .(that may come later in the post).  I am talking literally about the point  from which objects are viewed.  I bring this up because I believe my baby transitioned into a monster around the time he started to walk.  As soon as he began to view his surroundings from his feet and not his knees, a whole new world of possibilities for destruction and havoc wreaking was opened to him.  The toilet paper was now within easy reach, as were all knobs, handles, pulleys, cords, tables, chairs and couches.  What a difference a few inches can make!  When Ryan approaches one of these now easily accessible items, I firmly tell him, "NO......no, no, no, no, no."  He smiles his still toothless smile, pulls the knob to open the cabinet and hurls a bottle of hairspray at me.  My days are now filled with repeatedly replacing items in cabinets, re rolling the toilet paper at least three times, fishing shoes, balls, toys, sometimes clothes out of the bathtub, and every so often out of the toilet, and wiping an array of thrown and smashed foods off of every surface in my kitchen.  This is after I have emptied every baby toy in the house into the middle of the living room floor in the hopes that the monster will be momentarily distracted. Now, let's talk about silence.  I can't remember what it sounds like.  So, I guess we'll talk about noise.  Ryan's favorite noise to make is something like a cross between a pterodactyl screech and a deflating balloon.  Since he does not yet say any words, this delightful sound is his primary form of communication.  Each evening I prepare dinner to a serenade of "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE."  I used to clean the house to the soothing sounds of Jack Johnson or The Beatles.  Now, as I am up to my elbows in comet, instead of being soothed by mellow acoustics, I am accompanied by the all too familiar, "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!"  Like a good monster, he also occasionally growls.  Next, let's talk about social life.  I used to have one.  I would bring the monster formerly known as a baby along and have a nice chat with my friends.  If Ryan cried, I would give him a bottle and continue in the conversation.  Now, when I attempt to socialize at a play group, exercise group, or any other type of group, my friends stare open mouthed as my monster throws himself on the ground in fits of hysterics, contorting his body into positions that look like some form of baby yoga.  It is also quite difficult to get a word in edgewise over the "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"  My monster is single handedly destroying my social life.  Now let's talk about church.  We make it about two minutes in the chapel before the "EEEEEE HEEE's" force me to take my monster into the hall.  Since Dirk is not able to attend church with us most weeks, this means that my older two children are left sitting alone in the chapel.  I peek my head in the door every few minutes and give them a quick "you'd better stop what your doing if you want to make it to primary alive" face and a stern finger point.  I do this no matter what they happen to be doing when I peer in.  Just a precautionary measure.  By the time sacrament meeting is over, I have done my arm workout for the week and I am ready to hand off the monster to my obliging husband.  Never had I imagined that playing the piano for two hours for a room full of screaming children would be a reprieve.  Now let's talk about words.  By the time Morgan was monster's age, she was saying many of these.  Her vocabulary was quite extensive, and I'm not exaggerating.  The girl could say words like hippotomas and spaghetti with perfect pronunciation by the age of eighteen months.  Monster says "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEEEEE".  He also stares at me as I beg him to say "mama". He flashes a mischievous grin and says, "daddy."  Then he laughs as "mama" changes the world's most foul smelling diaper.
     Now let's talk about kisses.  I have come to adore slobbery, toothless monster kisses on my cheek.  I could also talk about monster smiles, monster belly laughs, and sweet monster sleeping, all of which are equally sublime.  These are the things that atone for the other monstrosities which almost cause me to pick up the phone and dial Blackfoot South ( I have it on speed dial just in case.)  Raising a monster is no easy feat.  There are days when the minute Dirk walks through the door and sees the look on my face and hears the "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEEEEE" from the hallway, he knows I need to get out of the house.  There are days when my main goal is to keep my sanity intact. It's amazing how quickly one tiny monster can unhinge your brain.  And yet, somehow, I wouldn't trade one minute of it.  I don't fully understand it myself.  I guess it's monster love.  I'm sure someday, when Ryan is a teenager and he tells me he hates me or I catch him smoking in the bathroom, I will look back on the monster days and wonder what I was so stressed out about.  I guess it really is all about point of view.  As parents, we struggle through the challenges of each new stage of our children's development.  It's never an easy job.  But there is such fulfillment in seeing that our children are turning slowly from toddle monsters into self-sufficient, thoughtful, reliable members of society.  It is a miraculous transformation to behold.  Some days it's easy to see that what we are wearing ourselves out working toward day after day is actually coming to pass.  And for those days when all of this is not quite so clear, there's always chocolate cake.