can someone please give me my kid back?

i’m experiencing a bit of frustration lately. okay, a lot. and it’s exhausting. something happened to my sweet, wonderful, bestest little boy ever and he has been replaced with a TWO YEAR OLD! ugh. i’ve been quite spoiled in the last two years. as a baby, micah was super-content and never required more than his fair share of attention. a little later, he discovered climbing and my biggest challenge was trying to keep him from falling on his head. for the last year or so, he’s been so low maintenance, i’ve REALLY gotten spoiled. last spring, i discovered that he was great for easy bedtimes. plunk him in the crib, give him a couple books, say night night, and that was it! a few tears here and there, but more often than not, would fall asleep without much fuss. he was also really good at entertaining himself and would disappear into his bedroom to read books. he was also mostly trustworthy about putting stuff in his mouth or other ‘dangerous’ type things. i could point at a burner, say ‘hot’ and he would walk away.

well, now i can’t turn my back 5 seconds without him getting into trouble! last week we had to say good bye to the crib because he could climb out of it, so now naps are a rare luxury. he runs away everytime you want him to do anything. he gets into layla’s coloring supplies and colors on EVERYTHING. he can reach anything i can by pushing a chair over or climbing onto the counter. he’s back on the table every other minute. he tries to help himself to the fruit basket (it’s a hanging fruit basket) all the time. he’s started playing in the toilet again. i got out the door knob covers again, but he already took one off once. his favorite ‘toys’ are things he’s not supposed to have. he likes to get on a stool and examine the contents of the junk drawer. he likes to pull shane’s school things off the shelf and scatter them all over the floor. toys are of very little use to him right now. the only thing he does with toys is dump them out all over the floor and then start chucking them across the room, OR hits people with them. SO fun. and he’s not interested in any of them for longer than 5 minutes, if that! UGH! yes, i realize he wants attention, but given that i’ve got a homeschooling 4th grader in the house, and a 4 year old as well, there are times i NEED him to entertain himself!

and then there’s the scary factor. last night, while dave, shane and i were all standing in the kitchen, micah sat down in the middle of the floor, RIGHT NEXT TO US, and proceeded to pull the jug of dishwasher detergent out of the child-locked cabinet under the sink. dave looked down and noticed him as he was pulling off the dried-on dribbles and putting them in his mouth and wiping it onto his face! hello!!!! i wiped a big blob of this stuff off of his eyelashes and washed out his mouth and gave him a big cup of milk, but i have to say, i stayed up VERY late last night so i could be sure he was okay… yes, he’s fine - he couldn’t have gotten very much in, but good grief! i always wondered who those kids were that you heard about who drank bleach or gasoline… well, now i know. sheesh!

thank goodness he’s still cute.

i know layla went through this too. starting around 18 months or so, she lost all interest in toys and only wanted to play with the mail, the laundry, important documents or other things that were not for her. i don’t think we ever really solved it, mostly just did damage control, and eventually she discovered coloring and that was that.

shane NEVER went through anything like this. he would play with cars or trains or whatever for hours. HOURS! he was very self-entertaining, never got into trouble.

at any rate, life is somewhat difficult right now. i’m feeling worn out. i didn’t get a shower in until 1:15 today when micah (miraculously) took a short nap. i used to be able to do that without worrying, but not now. and since he can get out of bed on his own, i’m not really comfortable doing it before he wakes up either (on the off chance that i should be able to drag myself out of bed before him). layla is kind of emotional right now as well, and shane is his usual highly-distractable, schoolwork-hating self, which leaves me frequently with 3 kids who require my undivided attention. right.

okay, sorry this was kind of a long ramble/rant/whine. life’s really not so bad, as long as i can keep micah in one piece and maintain some semblance of my sanity, i guess we’ll be okay. wish me luck!