I love my son. I would take a bullet to the face for him. I wrote “Becoming my father: PART 2,” and I was afraid people didn't like it because it sounded too bitter. So I want you to know that just because I complain about Junior, doesn't mean I don't love the crap out of him. I do, I really do.
That being said, he drives me nuts.
Junior seems to have misunderstood our relationship. All this time we've understood it as parents and child but he seems to think of it as servants and master. He has become so demanding lately. For example, whenever I’m using something he immediately wants it. He comes up and shouts, “Calle oye beep!” which means, “Give that to me now, servant!”
I can be using the TV remote or eating a sandwich and he will inevitably come up and demand whatever I have. He doesn't even really want it, sometimes he'll throw it aside immediately. If don't give it to him, he'll just try to grab it out of my hand. He'll say “Mome mome whoa whoa,” which means, “Why you insolent little dad! Don't you know who I am? I'm The Baby, and I run this whole show. Now gimme that sandwich!”
I'm getting pretty sick of it. One day I was eating some curry and he walked up to me and demanded, “Calle oye beep!”
“Oh no, Junior,” I said. “It's extremely spicy. Not for babies. I'm gonna have to drink, like, seven shots of Maalox just to survive this one bowl.”
“Calle oye beep,” he said sternly.
“Well if you insist...”
OK, I didn't really give it to him, because that would be mean, but oh, how I thought about it. Should I feel guilty about thinking that? I don't. The kid is out of control.
When I'm feeding him, he'll throw a fit if he doesn't think I'm feeding him fast enough. He bosses everyone around. If I take something away from him, he immediately goes boneless and flops around on the floor like a 15-month-old jellyfish. We keep telling him “no,” and it's getting better, but there are moments where I'm like, “Hey, you're kind of a jerk.”
And my wife says, “You can't call our baby a jerk!”
“Even if he is?” I ask in earnest.
“NO!”
(under my breath) “Well he is.”
This is an actual conversation we have had. Sometimes I fearfully wonder: Is this just typical baby stuff? Or is my child just a brat?
I keep thinking that we need to have another kid so Junior can be taken down a peg, but there's got to be an easier way. Perhaps he's just advanced and has hit the Terrible Twos at fifteen months, or maybe it gets worse.
I sure hope not.
Anyone else got a cranky baby, or any tips on how to deal with one? Leave a comment, it's easy!
I don't have kids so I am not sure what's acceptable behavior. I did just get a dog and I swear she tries to play me anytime she gets the opportunity. I am a sucker.
What drives me nuts more than the demanding behavior is the destruction. Just today Max decided to plug a cell phone charger into the USB port and SD card port of my computer. I could not get the computer to even wake up.
And books, books don't stand a chance, he rips pages of his favorite books and then demands that I "fix it". I still don't know how I develope magic powers that enable me to fix everything. Some things are just not fixable!
I have a 19 monther and I'd like to say it's the age. We have encouraged our son to say please when he is demanding stuff. I think it makes him seem a little nicer.
Having recently given birth to another boy I can advise with some experience that having a 2nd child will only make things worse... at least for the first 3 weeks and possibly longer.
Your daddy blogs are so much better than mommy blogs. So sick of "Daughter one is napping, and daughter two is watching Disney, so now Mommy gets to bake cookies and put a roast in the oven for when Daddy get home! I just love quiet afternoons home with my girls while my husband makes all kinds of money that I get to spend on whatever I want!!!!"
Definitely refreshing to read your words, even if they make me want to say encouraging, cheesy things like "this is but a small moment." I imagine the terror our children bring to us is exactly what we did to our parents... one of those the universe needs to be balanced, type things.