Why Toddlers are Terrorists

I shall preface this by saying that I do actually love all my drooly little disease-bearing relations niblings.

Before she began defaming my character, the Space Monkey posted about the day we babysat the niblings.

In general, her account is accurate from what she experienced. Hindsight reminds me that I am still so glad I slept through 6 of those paragraphs. I just thought I would supplement it with my recurring nightmares account.

My first observation is that children who can walk but not reason are terrorists.

This year's Christmas gifts.

The reason for this is that they can hold you hostage.

I have nothing but admiration for my brother and sister-in-law and their ability to survive—mostly—this world of horrors. And I do love their spawn progeny.

But there is a dark place in my heart that will always be filled with my nephew, Primus.

In case you're wondering about the names, since my in-laws multiplied rapidly in a very short period of time and since white people babies all look the same, I decided on a numerical system to keep track.

Seriously, you people are creepy.

Thus, I have three nephews on my wife's side: Primus, Secundus, and Tertius. Then there are the twins: Una and Mia (yay Greek!). This is at least slightly preferred by my wife to the alternative names of Creature, Cruel World, et al.

So we babysat Primus, Una, and Mia. This was, I will remind you, two days after my recent hospital stay. I was on a corticosteroid, flexeril, and percocet. The great blessing of this was that the latter two drugs made me sleepy so the Space Monkey did not openly begrudge me when I needed a nap.

The curse was that I could reasonably help in the ordeal.

For the most part, my job was to deal with Primus. During the day this wasn't all that bad except for the part where he can run and therefore likes to run. Neither of these is something true of me currently.

The other recurrent aspect of this was taking him to the potty on a ridiculously regular schedule. According to the Space Monkey—after the second time the child wet his pants—I needed to ask him if he needed to go potty starting 15 minutes after his last trip and to make him go potty by the 45 minute mark.

Otherwise....

Eventually, I determined the correct time was, in fact, 38:20.

The first time I took him to the potty, I thought he knew how to lower his pants. As I'm sure his mother can attest, this is only true when it is convenient to him. He lowered them just barely enough to whip it out and then missed the bowl. Happily, he then corrected his aim and decided about five seconds before he was done that he was done. He then interrupted the stream with his hand and put junior away before he was done.

Seriously.

So this began the tradition of making him wash his hands each time he used the potty.As many of you, I figured it's obvious you make a child wash his hands every time he goes potty. That was before I learned that it's probably more work than its worth unless he pees up his hand.

See, soap and rushing water create suds, and suds fascinate children. This fascination manifests itself in refusal to remove the hands from the pool of suds, pounding hands in the suds, returning hands to the water after uncle—who loves you and wants nothing but the best for you—has dried your hands, etc.

On future trips to the potty, I took it upon myself to pull his pants down, which is not a sentence I ever envisioned myself typing. It's also not an act I was wildly comfortable with. It was also my duty per the wife to undress him and dress him the first time we had to replace his peed upon clothing. This involved getting closer to the nekkid child than I ever wanted to be.

My wife has already detailed most of the rest of the horrors of the day related to Primus, in particular his distressing penchant for banging his fists on our new patio doors.

Seriously, cut it out.

Finally, the nightcap. My wife's explanation of the situation is factual while falling short of the truth because there's too much "Awwww, poor baby" involved. I, however, am constrained by no such delusions of cuteness because I recognize what this was.

A hostage situation.

See, I've babysat infants before. It only takes you one time of babysitting them to realize that sometimes when you put them down for nap, you just have to let them cry for a bit. This is why God made doors. As it concerns Una and Mia, this was true. When the Space Monkey put them down for the evening, they cried for 3 minutes and then fell asleep for 12 hours.

This was a triumph.

But Primus is ambulatory. So when we put him down to sleep, he can cry and get up and open doors.

And terrorize you.

The Space Monkey blames my "irrational" irritation with him on the steroids. There's just one problem with this theory.

A month later I still lose sleep thinking about it.