Surely this too shall pass

When I was freaking out last year, just after Jacob had been born and Isaac decided he needed to run around and push people because their bottoms were obviously too high off the floor, a wise blogger and seasoned parent told me something very important about parenting. "Trust me," he said, "it will get easier. And then harder. And then easier. And then harder. See a pattern here?" It's funny, when there was just one of them, how devastating I found parenting to be at times. 'Why on earth is Isaac doing this?' I would wonder. 'Is there something wrong with him? Is there something wrong with me? He's never going to quit waking through the night/drinking milk from a bottle/pushing his little friends! Our lives are over, and I am a terrible mother!' And then Isaac would stop doing those things, can you believe it, and such feelings would subside for a time.

I know there are bloggers who are expecting their second and who also stop and read about my boys every once in awhile. I've been meaning to share something with them for far too long, something that nobody ever told me that I've discovered from parenting two young people. Yes, it is very hard, much harder than it is with just one. But it is also unbelievably refreshing in one particular sense. With every phase, every antic, every tantrum, from somewhere inside you lives an overwhelming calm that comes from really, truly knowing that This Too Shall Pass. And not just because all Those People tell you it will, since anything Those People know to be true seems to get immediately discounted in our household, because our children, they are special! and like no other! No, the second time around you realize that you really have lived through this horrible episode of tantrum-throwing, this exact moment really, and seen it turned under as your son plows through the months.

That being said, we are officially entering into the Dark Ages here at the O'Neal estates, where we have two full-fledged and highly opinionated toddlers under the roof at the same time. With highly mobile and highly vocal Jacob, we are entering into a new era, one designed as Mommy's one-way ticket to the looney bin. She shakily tells herself that This Too Shall Pass, and yet in the meantime her house is a complete disaster, her family is eating frozen things most nights, and her book assignments, oh, we will not speak of their lateness because it is just too depressing.

On the one hand, there is Isaac, who recently discovered that he really is three. For the last year, all he needed was the threat of time-out and I could mold him to my will. That delicious time is now gone. You can almost hear him saying, "What's that? You mean I don't have to do what my Mom tells me to? Cool!" What he really does say is "I'm busy." or "Just a minute!" or just flat out "No, I don't want to do that." You know, exactly the phrases that Mom and Dad use all the time when talking to him. He has uncovered the Devil's Playbook, the one that instructs him precisely which of our favorite phrases to use against us that will incite the most incredible animal-like screaming from me.

And just in case there was any doubt as to where Parrot Isaac learned these special words... this evening we were taking in his new favorite show, a Nature special on PBS about a sea turtle. It's awesome, by the way. Think live-action Finding Nemo. There are all these colorful and interesting sea critters, many of which were unfamiliar to him. Of course he wants me to tell him what they are. "Mommy," he asked me not once, but twice, "what the H is that?"

DADA! You are totally grounded.

And then there is Jacob, who should be renamed as His Royal Screaming Toddler Lordship Edmund Hillary. If he is not suspended in mid-air climbing something he should not, then life for him is not worth living and he will likely tell you as such. Just this evening he protested loudly, including fits of throwing his body on the floor and hurling his teeth into table corners on purpose, unless he was sitting atop one of the following things:
*a wholesale-club pack of paper towels
*the toilet
*my bed
*an endtable
our rickety shoe rack (the only thing I did not allow him to summit)
*a dining room chair
*our computer desk chair

Then, while I was helping Isaac use the potty, Jacob exited the bathroom to climb feet-first into Isaac's potty-training potty (AKA our second upstairs bathroom), screamed because he was stuck, started thrashing about, and then fell over, taking the potty with him. And none of these exploits, not one, account for the massive diagonal slash of a purple bruise on his forehead.

While my human children are surely going to kill me or themselves in no time flat, my cat-child is making a remarkable recovery. After three days of peeing all over the house, Dada locked Moses in our bedroom with some food and the Poop Condo. Miraculously, that was all Cat-Brother needed to remember his passionate love for his Poop Condo and now there is no more bloody kitty pee on my chair. He is completely back to himself, including meowing loudly while everyone is asleep to let me know that I need to come, quick, and give him his precious Soft Food before he has to deign to eat his kibble. At least for Cat-Brother (knock on wood), the worst really has passed.