“Move!” she’ll say, pushing my legs out of her way.
“What’s the magic word?”
It’s so odd that she can learn so many things, do so many new things, speak so many new words, but for the life of her, she can’t remember to say “Please” and “Thank you.” It makes me wonder, what’s the point of even reminding her? She never says it on her own anyway.
Midnight
“Can you turn the light off?” I ask the Fiancé.
“What are the magic words?”
“‘Fuck’ and ‘off,’” I answer.
He leaves the room, heading to the washroom, without turning them off.
“Pleaseandthankyou! Pleaseandthankyou! Pleaseandthankyou!” I scream out after him.
July 22
Along with me having to ask “What are the magic words?” a billion times a day, I have also made the grave mistake of buying a children’s CD for the car. I now have to listen to “Bingo” over and over and over again while we drive. I really might have to check myself in to an institution.
August 1
“Okay, baby. Put this on,” I say to the Dictator.
We’re in the driveway, just having returned from the mall. She made me listen to “Bingo” twenty-six times in a row on the ride back. I bought the Dictator a fake-fur vest at the mall. It’s pink. It’s adorable. It cost seventy-five dollars.
“No!” she says.
“Please? It’s so cute! Put it on for Daddy!”
“No!” she says again.
Argh! I just spent seventy-five dollars on this thing, and now she refuses to wear it?
“Come on! Just for a second. Feel it, soft! Like a cat. You want to wear the cat?”
“Okay,” she finally agrees. “Cat.”
We walk in. “Daddy,” I call out. “Look what we bought!”
The Fiancé takes one look at the Dictator and bursts out laughing.
“That’s hilarious.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Off! Off! Off!” the Dictator screams.
“Okay, I guess she doesn’t want to wear it now,” I say, taking it off of her.
“How much was that?” the Fiancé asks.
“I don’t remember.”
“Beck.”
“Like, seventy-five dollars.”
“Great. So she’s going to be like you. Have a million things in her closet that she’ll never wear.”
“Oh, come on! It’s cute!”
“She’ll never wear it.”
“I know. But it’s cute, isn’t it?”
Like mother, like daughter, right?
August 3
I’ve realized that if I say to the Fiancé that the Dictator needs new clothes, he’s always okay with it. How can you argue if your child, let’s say, needs new pajamas from Baby Gap? The best thing about always having to buy things for your child, who is constantly growing, is that I realized I can buy clothes for me too, without telling the Fiancé.
Now, I’ll go shopping for the Dictator, but I’ll also buy clothes for myself. I just put mine at the bottom of the shopping bags full of clothes for the Dictator.
Evil? Maybe. But hiding clothes I buy for myself under clothes I’ve bought for the Dictator that she actually needs (and sometimes doesn’t) is easier than saying, “No, I will wear this. I promise!”
Just as men don’t understand artwork done by their toddlers, they also don’t really care about the clothes you buy for their toddlers. If I come home with a bag of clothes for the Dictator, he’ll ask, “What did you buy?”
I’ll answer, “Oh, she needed some new pants. And I got her some socks.”
The Fiancé never asks to see what I bought. He’s just not that into children’s clothing, what can I say? When I take the bag upstairs, I run to my closet first, dump in what I bought for myself, and the Fiancé is none the wiser. Hey, I have friends who have secret credit cards they hide from their husbands. This is so much better than that, isn’t it?
September 1
We go to Tammy’s house, which has become our regular destination on Monday nights. Tammy, who owns an art gallery, has very interesting art on her walls. On one wall there is a huge painting of a naked woman, lying on a bed, holding a video camera. She has dark pubic hair.
“Mommy naked!” the Dictator says, pointing at the painting. “Mommy naked!”
Tammy and her husband start laughing. I’m mortified! Now Tammy and her husband think they know what I look like naked!
“Mommy naked! Mommy naked!” the Dictator keeps repeating.
Crap. Is this what her talking is going to be like?
September 3
“Can we take your car?” I ask the Fiancé.
“Why? Because yours is disgusting?”
“Do you think rats can get into cars?”
“Beck!”
“I know. But it’s beyond cleaning up. I think we need to get me a new car.”
“No!”
“I know. But there’s a smell coming from somewhere in there and I can’t figure out from where,” I tell the Fiancé.
“It’s probably a half-empty bottle of milk that rolled under your seat four months ago.”
“That’s what I think too. Can you look? I’m scared something’s going to bite me if I put my hand under the seat.”
“It’s like I have two children,” the Fiancé mutters, storming off.
Sentences I’ve Heard Way Too Many Times Coming Out of the Fiancé’s Mouth Since Having a Baby
1. I can’t believe she’s up again.
2. It’s like I have two children.
3. Have you taken your antidepressant?
September 6
I decide that the Dictator and I are going to go on an adventure.
I’m going to take her out for ice cream, because I’m a good mother. I’m also a very stupid mother.
I push her in her stroller to get her a chocolate ice cream cone—because I like chocolate—at an ice cream parlor just down the road. She doesn’t actually want to eat the ice cream; she just wants to hold the cone. But the Dictator will not let me take it away. She just wants to hold the dripping disaster.
Outside the house, I run into an acquaintance and her husband who are on a walk. My child is covered in chocolate ice cream. I’m mortified. I know they’re thinking, “How could she let her child leave the house looking so dirty?”
It’s the same when I take her to the park. She could be perfectly clean when we leave the house at 6 P.M., but by 6:30 she looks like I sent her camping in the woods for a week…and then told her to roll around in a pigpen.
I had no idea children could get so dirty in a matter of minutes. No more ice cream.
September 8
“I wuv you, Mommy,” the Dictator says out of nowhere.
I swear, I think my heart cracked a little, in a good way, like when the guy you’ve had a huge crush on for years admits to you that he’s been interested in you for years.
It’s the first time she has ever said those three words to me. They are the best and sweetest three words I have ever heard.
I give her a huge hug. “I love you too,” I say.
September 9
“Where is Thumbkin? Where is Thumbkin? Here I am. Here I am. How are you today, sir? Very fine, I thank you. Run away. Run away,” I sing to the Dictator, holding her thumb.
“What song are you singing?” the Fiancé asks, walking into the kitchen where we’re hanging out. I know he’s super-impressed that I know a children’s song that’s not Barney or Dora. I feel great about this, even though Nanny Mimi just taught me the words to it yesterday, after I heard her singing it to the Dictator.
“It’s the Thumbkin song,” I say, like he’s so out of it for not knowing the song.
September 13
I love my daughter, I do. But sometimes she’s embarrassing. It’s bad enough when she cries in public, but now that she talks in public as well…
This evening we went to a Chinese restaurant with the in-laws.
It was one of those nights that the Dictator was actually in a great mood, ate a bowl of rice, and behaved. On the way out, she yelled at the top of her lungs, “Good-bye, everybody! Good-bye, everybody!”
I’m not exaggerating when I say the entire restaurant turned and looked at us.
Is it wrong to be embarrassed by your own child?
September 16
5 P.M.
“Do not hit me!” I yell at the Dictator.
“Again?” she says. She thinks hitting me, her mother, is a game.
“No!” I say.
“Again?” she asks, smiling. And I feel a slap on my face, and see stars.
“Do NOT hit me,” I say, tears welling up. For a second, I feel like hitting her back, and I feel awful about this. “Do not hit me again. You be nice to Mommy,” I tell her.
“Again?” she asks.
Argh! Is this what people mean by the terrible twos? Have they started already?
“Do you want to go to bed?” I threaten.
“No yet,” she says.
“Then you do not hit Mommy. Bad hitting.”
“Again?” she asks, raising her hand.
“Do you want to go to bed?” I threaten again.
“No yet,” she says, and takes her hand down.
Argh. I’ve created, well, a human. She’s the Devil Child.
6 P.M.
“I wuv my mommy,” the Dictator says.
My eyes well up. “I love you, Rowan.”
“I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, Rowan.”
“I love you, Mommy.”
“I love you, Rowan.”
My child is an angel.
September 29
“We’ve got to plan the Dictator’s birthday party,” I tell the Fiancé.
“Do we really have to? Again? Didn’t we just have one last year?”
“Yes, of course we have to! Um, that’s the thing about birthdays. They happen once a year, dear.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll do the entire thing,” I promise.
“Sure you will.”
“I will!”
October 1
It’s nearly Nanny Mimi’s anniversary with us. I head to Holt Renfrew to buy her a present, with the baby in tow. We’re at the Louis Vuitton counter. I know Nanny Mimi loves Louis Vuitton, and I thought I’d get her a nice traveling cosmetic bag.
As we’re waiting to be served, the Dictator sees a beautiful model-like woman walk by. “Dirty woman, Mommy. Dirty!”
“No!” I say as harshly as I can, while whispering. “Shh! She’s not dirty. She’s beautiful.”
“Dirty,” the Dictator says again.
“Beautiful,” I say.
The beautiful model-like woman is African American. I feel embarrassed and awful, and I check around to see if anyone overheard our little conversation. Luckily, I don’t think so. And, luckily, the Dictator stops talking after a price tag on a scarf distracts her.
I’m so weirded out. I mean, it’s not like the Dictator hasn’t seen dark-skinned people before. Nanny Mimi, for example, is Filipino. Nanny Mimi’s boyfriend, who the Dictator has met a hundred times already, is East Indian.
For some reason, I remember quite vividly asking my mother what she was buying at the grocery store when I was about six years old. It was a box of maxi pads, and I remember my mother saying when I had asked what it was, “I’ll tell you at home.”
God, I would much rather the baby ask me about tampons than have to explain why people have different-color skin, that’s for sure. God, I miss the days when she didn’t speak. Babies can be so embarrassing, even when they’re your own. Especially when they’re your own.
October 3
We’re on portable DVD player number three. Don’t even ask. Let’s just say that you can’t have a baby pour a cup of soy milk all over it and expect it to still work. The Fiancé is not a happy camper. “That’s it. This is the last one,” he tells the Dictator, when he arrives home armed with our third DVD player (or is it our fourth? I can’t remember).
I’m positive the Dictator looked at him with an evil glint in her eye.
October 8
We’re going to a concert! Tickets cost, like, $150 a pop. I hope it’s worth it. The group is super-popular.
Yes, the Fiancé, the Dictator, and I are heading to see the Wiggles next month. We had to buy tickets now because we heard they sell out fast.
I know, I know. Pathetic.
The Wiggles are a group from Australia that I only know of because they are at the end of the Barney videos. The mother-in-law cut out an article from the paper about the group. They make like a gazillion dollars a year, doing kid shows. It makes me sick. Not that my life is now about going to concerts for kids. (The Fiancé and I have discussed the Wiggles when we see clips of their performances: Are they gay? Are they not gay? Does it really matter? No.) We’re paying more than four hundred dollars for three seats to a concert we’re not even sure the Dictator will be awake for, and even if she is, will she really enjoy herself?
It makes me sick that I didn’t decide to become a children’s performer. I’m serious. Why did I decide to become a writer, when I could maybe make more in one children’s show than I do in an entire year?
I contemplate whether it’s too late to make a career change.
October 9
The Dictator can count to ten. Well, sort of.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, ten,” she’ll say, over and over.
For some reason, she never says the number nine, no matter how many times I remind her about the number nine. Poor number nine.
She can also now sing the alphabet, except for the letters F, I, and V.
October 10
7 A.M.
“Beck,” the Fiancé says, waking me up. I had an awful night’s sleep. The Dictator, I think, was having baby nightmares. (What do babies have nightmares about anyway?) I had decided to sleep in her bed with her. Which would have been fine, if she had nice high-thread-count sheets like I’m used to sleeping on. Oh, no. The baby has Dora the Explorer sheets—a gift from Nanny Mimi—which are so rough, they feel like a cheap brand of paper towel when my face rubs up against them. But she loves her Dora the Explorer sheets and doesn’t seem to mind at all that she’s practically sleeping on sandpaper.
“Beck,” he says again. I know the Fiancé well enough now to know when he’s in lecture mode. I think to myself, “Did I leave the lights on downstairs? Did I leave a dirty plate in the living room? Did I shave my legs with his razor and not warn him?”
“What?” I say crankily.
“I woke up and went downstairs and Rowan was in the kitchen already,” he says.
I jump awake. “What?”
“I thought I heard the pitter-patter of little feet, and so I went downstairs, and Rowan was in the kitchen playing with the light switches, turning them off and on.”
“Really?”
“Yes. And I asked her where Mommy was, and she said, ‘Sleeping.’”
“Wow.”
“Beck?”
“Yes.”
“This is why you have to remember to lock the baby gates. This is why we have baby gates.”
Right.
October 11
I can’t believe I’m a counter now. That’s right. A counter.
“Rowan, if you don’t pick that up…I’m going to count to three,” I say.
The weird thing is, I’ve never used the counting threat before. How does a child know that counting to three is a bad thing? She could have just thought, “Okay, count to three. Then what?”
It’s good though that the counting-to-three thing actually works. I’m glad, because if I got to three and she didn’t pick up the deck of animal flash cards, I wouldn’t know what to do anyway. What do you do after you count to three?
October 12
How have I forgotten to get married?
Vivian asks me today if I’m ever going t
o get married.
“I don’t know. You know, we really haven’t talked about it,” I answer.
Raising a baby has taken over so much of our time; I’m not sure how I’d fit in planning a wedding.
“Maybe I should wait until Rowan is old enough to understand what’s going on?” I say to Vivian. How many children can say they were at their biological parents’ wedding, after all?
You know, maybe I do want to get married.
October 15
6 P.M.
It’s the Dictator’s second birthday. I can’t believe she’s now two years old. I also can’t believe that makes me two years older as well. The party, which was from 2 to 5 P.M., is now over. I actually had a great time. Once again, we invited everyone we knew who had children to come over to our house. I had hired a clown to make balloon animals, another clown to paint faces, and a caricaturist for the older kids. I had helium balloons all over the house. I had also called a catering company to come and serve appetizers and a bar service for the grown-ups. I had ordered a cake shaped like Elmo.
“I’m just so impressed with what you did,” the Fiancé says. “I can’t believe you organized all that all by yourself. It was great, Beck. Just great.”
“I did good, didn’t I?” I ask him.
“You did great! I’m amazed you did all that. It was amazing.”
Okay, it wasn’t that hard. One company provided the clowns, the helium balloons, and the caricaturist.
Total cost of my two-year-old’s birthday party?
Fifteen hundred dollars.
I’ll tell the Fiancé that later. Right now, he’s too happy with me.
October 15
8 P.M.
Because the Dictator doesn’t really understand the concept of presents, I open them all for her. The reason to have a birthday party for babies is for the presents. It’s not about making your child happy, I realize. I won’t have to shop for games or clothes for another year. I’m so going to have a big birthday party for her next year.
Ten Things I’ve Learned Since Becoming a Mother
1. I couldn’t live without the in-laws. But I sometimes would like to.
2. The Fiancé and I have to work at our sex life now.
3. Though I complain, I am so thankful I have had my child.
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