All May Quiet On The Western Front, But It’s Loud As Fuck Over Here

by Cookie

It makes noise? Sold!

Being the parent of a toddler sure is interesting.  It’s also seriously fucking annoying sometimes.  There.  I said it.  And stop judging me, because you know that you think it sometimes too.

You know why it’s so frustrating some days?  Because a toddlers mind is like a gerbil on cocaine.  They are going a million miles a minute on the inside but don’t have any real objectives.  They don’t know what they are trying to accomplish.  Other than driving their 75 month pregnant mother up the goddamn wall.

Whenever you find something reasonably safe, quiet, tidy and not annoying for them to do, they get bored with it in about 45 seconds.  But drumming as loud as possible on a wooden xylophone while you’re trying to watch Game of Thrones?  We could do that all fucking day.  And when we do get bored of that, we’ll move on to hammering on the wall with drumstick.  Anything to make a bit of noise.  If any moms out there want to know why they suddenly start suffering from migraines post-partum, it’s because nothing will ever be quiet again once you have a child.

I feel that half my time during the day is spent creating diversions.  Like yesterday, trying to wrangle the Destroyer into the carseat after walking out of the store.  The outside time did not meet quota, and she was fixing for a real fit in the middle of the parking lot.  But then, thank fucking Christ in Heaven, a train started to slowly come by.  “Hey look!  A real train!  What does the train say?”

Problem solved.  Because I gave her an opportunity to make noise.  It was enough of a distraction to stop the fit and sentence myself to  a car ride full of choo choo sounds.  Remember what I said about it never being quiet?

Everything, and I mean everything, comes with a sound effect.  And I will admit that some of them are quite adorable and funny.  Destroyer identifies all things by the sound it makes.  Or at least the sound she thinks it makes.  I didn’t know this before I had kids, but a giraffe  makes a “SSSSSSS” sound similar to a snake’s hiss.  Who knew?

What’s that?  You’re happy?  Yes.  Let’s all scream that high pitched, glass breaking, sterility inducing shriek of pleasure.  And make sure you do it extra loud when Daddy is working nights and trying to sleep during the day.  That’s fucking awesome, kid.

Last night, or more correctly, this morning, Destroyer woke up and slid her little self out of bed.  We’ve made the transition to a big girl bed in the last week, and it was surprisingly easy.  When we put her to bed, we close the bedroom door.  As soon as we leave, she gets out of bed, opens her dresser drawer, and throws all of her fucking pajamas all over the floor and then climbs back into bed where she stays until about 8 the next morning.  It’s the only thing she does quietly.  Anyway, once she’s sleeping I go upstairs, put her clothes away and put a gate across her doorway so that we don’t have to keep her door closed at night. We do it because her room is close to the stairs and also because her room gets fucking cold at night unless it’s open.  She doesn’t even notice it.

Until last night when she changed it up a bit.  Oh yeah, we had the nightly pajama toss, but she woke up around 5am screaming.  And I guess she figured she’d toddle out of bed into our room and crawl into bed with me.

And was met with a gate.  Something blocking her.  You can imagine how she felt about that.  I’m actually surprised I didn’t get to her room to find the fucking thing on fire or something.  She was so pissed she wouldn’t even let me change her diaper.  Whatever.  If she wants to sit in pissy pants for a couple of hours so be it.  It’s too early too fight and I haven’t had coffee yet.

Anyway.  I figure that I can pretty much assume that everything is crisis when you’re not quite two.  There is no differentiation between “want”  and “need”.  And not getting something you need creates anxiety.  And that means you should make noise.  Or is that just for Irish people?