Sydney and Kanye: Two Peas in a Pod?

If it is sacrilegious to admit your children annoy you, then let the shouts of “Satan!” come my way.

I love my daughter more than anything on earth, but this new “Terrible Twos” phase she is apparently hitting early is putting her just a notch below Kanye West on the annoyance meter.

Here are a few things Sydney has taken to doing that I am certain are designed to entice me into child abuse and get me sent away so she can spend her days eating nothing but cupcakes:

Spitting out her food. Somehow, she has come to believe that if she is eating something and decides – mid-chew, mind you -- she doesn’t want it, she can simply spit it out. This could be in her high chair, or while she walks around the house.

This is obviously unacceptable. And I have told her so. Loudly. Over and over.

The other day she took a couple bites of an apple, slowly opened her mouth and nonchalantly let the contents drop to the floor.

My wife’s response to this was, “Well, you know, she doesn’t like the skin.”

“Oh, OK, I guess we’ll let her turn our living room into an apple orchard because she doesn’t like the skin. She doesn’t like being confined to our yard either, so maybe we should let her take her toys to the middle of the street and play.”

Chirp. Chirp.

That’s the sounds of crickets. Sarcasm doesn’t go over well in my house when the wife is the target.

Believe me, I am going to break Sydney of this habit or I will end up in the graveyard of failed parents, alongside Dina and Michael Lohan and whomever parented Amanda Bynes. Throw in those teen moms from MTV, too. We’ll have a hell of a party.  

The only saving grace on this one is we have dogs that follow her around and scoop up her remnants shortly after they hit the floor. They stalk her as a tiger does its prey. I think sometimes she does it just to see the dogs eat it.

Is my child the only one who does this?

Throwing her plate of food on the floor. For a while, we had her “trained” to say “all done” when she felt she had eaten enough. She’d often say this with great exuberance, “All Done!” and that was our cue to immediately clear her plate and get her out of the chair.

Now, she seems to have eschewed our agreed-upon signal for the distressing act of dumping her food on the floor. Where does one learn this? If you know me and my rather large physique, you know very little food ever gets dumped off my plate, so this cannot be something she is learning at home.

Again, thank God for the dogs. I never have to worry about carpet stains because they are on those stray morsels faster than Kim Kardashian scurrying to her next red carpet interview.

Nevertheless, this brazen act is similar to spitting out her food and does not go unpunished.

But I am just not sure a 22-month-old mind yet comprehends the whole concept of “right and wrong.” I’ll keep trying, because, at some point, either she’ll get it or my heart will explode in frustration and I’ll fade blissfully from this earth to a place where all children happily eat all the food on their plates – including their vegetables -- carry them to the sink on their own and hand wash them to spotlessness.

Totally ignoring me. The other day, I asked Sydney 15 times to look at me so I could show her something. She was playing no further than five feet away. Somehow, she managed to keep her back turned through all 15 pleadings.

This is a remarkable skill, when you think about it. This single-mindedness and ability to block out the world around you might lead to great things. I imagine this is how Stephen Hawking is when he is working on some serious physicist stuff.

It is also a growing trend. She regularly has a very nonchalant attitude when it comes to taking directions from others. Perhaps she is practicing for her teen years.

I can’t wait for those golden years when she essentially serves as dad’s gopher, fetching a newspaper or beer, or picking up things his 50-year-old body refuses to bend for. I still remember when I was about 8 and playing outside with my friends, hearing my dad call “Brian!” several times and running inside to see what he needed.

“Can you change the channel for me?” he asked. (This was before the days of remote control.)

Ahh, the rites of fatherhood. When do I get there with Sydney?

Until then, I’ll continue to repeat simple commands like, “It is time for bed, let’s go upstairs” and she’ll continue to stack her Legos, like daddy’s voice is a dog whistle her ears are not attuned to.

So those are my top three complaints as of now. It is important to note that this is a fluid process, and as we conquer one annoying habit, another soon pops up. If you ask me six months from now, this list will be different and, perhaps, quite longer.

Now, I could also do a post on all of the things that I adore about my daughter, from her recitation of the ABCs in order to get everyone to clap for her; to her getting excited and shouting a 25-word diatribe, of which only about five are actual words you can understand; to the ultimate daddy-loving symbol of affection, the “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!” I get when she runs into my arms upon my arrival from work.

But that would bore you. Or seem like bragging. Or paint me as a nice guy.

Call me a guy who likes to go against the grain. Even if it is sacrilegious to the shrine of parenting.

Late-stage Pregnancy and the Terrible Twos in the Same House

                                                  Sydney: Terrible Twos
                                                           
My wife is in the stage of pregnancy where she just can’t seem to get comfortable. We are less than a month away and she has a giant medicine ball attached to her, so I’m not surprised.

“It is too hot in here” is often followed by, 15 minutes later, “It is too cold in here.” “This bed is too hard” quickly becomes ‘This bed is too soft.” When it comes to me, “Your very existence is pissing me off” can rapidly become “Where is the butcher knife so I can stab you in your heart?”

I really can’t blame her. She has spent nine months not eating carbs because of her gestational diabetes. That alone would make me breathe fire and spit nails. Now, with only three weeks to go, she could really use a pizza.

The other night she said to me, “I don’t ever remember being this uncomfortable with Sydney.”

To which I started to reply, “Well, you were. You just don’t remember. I lived through it and I can tell  you…”

I stopped my sentence midstream after noticing she was giving me a stare that could peel the paint off a bassinette.

Don’t mess with a pregnant woman. Just agree with everything she says.

It has gotten so bad, she is giving her dog away. I kid you not.

I’ve clued you all in on Murphy in a previous post. There is no doubt in my mind he would be in a special ed class if he walked upright. If I ever pen the book Murphy and Me, his exploits would put Marley to shame.

We have a small house. Sydney has an 8-yard by 3-yard play area that she shares with two dogs whom weigh nearly 100 pounds each. This is not a good recipe for fun when the dogs get excited, unless your version of fun is seeing your daughter used as a ping pong ball between two Chinese table tennis stars.

And Murphy is ALWAYS excited. If you go outside to get the mail, when you open that door after being gone for oh, 15 seconds, it is as if you went to Bora Bora for three months.

Add an angry pregnant woman into this volatile mix and you’ll find life can be a little tense. Brooke has vowed that the arrival of Baby Gregg #2  (name to be announced soon in a quick blog post) will necessitate a “break” from her beloved Murphy. He’s going to spend summer camp at his grandma and grandpa’s house, where there is a lot of green pasture for him to get excited about.

I have a feeling her mind will change after she delivers and can actually get a good night’s sleep for a change. Lack of sleep can cause edginess, I hear.

Or homicidal tendencies.

Brooke is not the only angry one in our house. My 19-month-old daughter seems to be hitting the Terrible Twos a bit early. More than once in the past month or so, I have asked myself where my sweet, beautiful child has gone.

She’s started screaming and crying when she doesn’t get her way. She doesn’t like to hear the word no, which may be the very word she hears the most since she is always getting into something she should not be getting into. The cupboards. The DVD player. Liquid Drano. The open bottle of wine her father intends to guzzle to get away from it all. You name it, she wants it.

When she gets angry and you try to pick her up and comfort her,  she’ll throw her head back, I guess in an attempt to get away. She’s come very close to knocking my teeth out a couple of times.

She seems to never be satisfied. Give her a room full of toys and she has to play with the Ipod in your hand.

I hate to say this, but my relationship with her lately has been similar to my relationship with a lot of my past girlfriends. Let me explain:

I had a girlfriend of several months about a decade ago and we went out on a Friday night. I spent the night, and that Saturday we went to an event that lasted most of the day. We then went out to dinner and back to her place, where I spent the night. On Sunday, we went to a town known for its antiquing (don’t ask) and spent the day there.

When we arrived back at her house, I told her I was headed home. She was angry that I did not want to come inside. I told her I had just spent the whole weekend with her and was ready for some down time.

This reasoning did not go over well.

“God, how much do I have to give?” I thought. “I spent all weekend with this chick, and she still isn’t happy. I give a little and she wants a lot. I can’t ever give enough.”

So I broke up with her.

Now, let me give you an example of how Sydney seems to fall into the same category. The other day, she was playing inside and wanted to go outside. So I took her out on the porch to play. That wasn’t good enough. So I took her to the yard/driveway. She played awhile there, but that wasn’t good enough.

She then wanted to go back behind our garage and into a gap between the garage and fence that was about two feet wide. Had she gotten in there, I am not sure my offensive tackle-like physique could have followed.

So, I pulled my best Anthony Munoz and blocked her.

This sent the tears gushing like Niagara Falls and the venom spewing like Mount Vesuvius. She spent the next fifteen minutes using all of her 30 inches and 24 pounds trying to knock me over so she could reach her intended goal. All the while, screaming and crying to the point I felt the neighbors might call 241-KIDS.

You give and you give and you give and it is never enough. They always want more and if they don’t get it, YOU are the bad guy.

She is well on her way to womanhood.

So, feel sorry for me. I have a pregnant wife and Terrible Two year old. I am living on the edge.

At least the wife gives birth on May 10. Sydney’s got more than a year to go, and I hear age 3 can be just as bad.

Forget feeling sorry for me. Pray for me.