I’ll be waiting forever for the “easy” part of parenting a toddler to show up, but nothing on any given day is harder than getting out of the house on a weekday. Miles never wants to wake up (that makes two of us, buddy), never wants to get dressed, never wants to brush his teeth…he just never wants to MORNING.
His daily manic fits of desperation typically lead him to start making all sorts of demands of escalating craziness. He might demand juice or food (both of which he’ll get at daycare, but which are, ultimately, easy for us to accommodate), he might insist on Jaclyn giving him “three kisses and three hugs” (maybe I’m supposed to be holding him, maybe not…whichever I’m not doing is inevitably what he’ll want), maybe he doesn’t want THESE socks — he wants OTHER ONES. I’ve seen less unreasonable celebrity riders. Beyonce makes fewer demands than this kid does.
This week, Miles has insisted on bringing any random objects he can scoop up along with us in the car. Yesterday, he left the house with three stuffed animals (exactly one more than he can reasonably carry). This morning, it was a bunch of Duplo blocks and his astronomy projector (the latter of which, he said, contained “coffee and juice”).
Does he actually use any of these things in the car? Of course not! Heck, even the juice he’s asked for goes untouched pretty regularly. They’re all just tactics to slow our morning routine to a crawl. Even so, when we finally reach daycare, Miles will again have a specific list of accommodations to ensure proper transportation and care of whatever crap he’s loaded into the car. He’ll remind me to put his drink in the refrigerator at work, and that he’ll drink it after school. He’ll tell me that, somehow, I need to make sure his stuffed animals both 1) remain in my car for the day and 2) are in mommy’s car when she arrives to pick him up in the afternoon (NOTE: this is, obviously, impossible). But at this point the actual battle is over; once we’re out of the house, all I have to do is agree. Once I arrive home with his drink, toys, etc, he’ll take one look at them, vaguely recognizing that he had asked me to care for them, them go back to whatever new thing has captured his attention. And on and on it goes…
The Perils (& Pride) of Paternity 