My niece is gonna give me body issues

Tags

roundhouse kick to the face, terrible twos

When my niece was a small lump of baby flesh and unable to so much as lift up her own head, I longed for the day when she would be able to walk, talk, and move of her own volition.

Those of you that have experienced children in close quarters for long periods of time probably know where this blog post is heading.

I want to go back in time and give past Gyasi who wished for a walking, talking, and critical thinking niece a roundhouse kick to the face.

She should have enjoyed stagnant lump of baby flesh Emmalyn more.

Emmalyn will be 3 years old in January. This means that she is currently in the midst of the terrible twos. The terrible twos are as terrible as they say times thirty-five. Really they should be called The Abominable Twos or the Demonic Twos because as soon as the child hits 24 months, they transform into Satan’s Mistress. Or Satan’s Minion if it’s a boy.

A few weeks ago, my sister and her family came to visit for He-Man’s sixtieth birthday. Yes, yes, He-Man is the big 6-0. Is he pleased with this development? Extremely. They don’t tell you this until you reach the big 5-9, but the big 6-0 is the age when you get to go on a 2 week cruise to Alaska and leave your child at home.

For 2 weeks.

You go whale watching.

She stays home.

Not that I’m bitter or anything.

Anyway, Emmalyn came to visit for a few days and couldn’t have been happier. She loves her Papa Herman. She can’t get enough of her Papa Herman. When Papa Herman walks through the door she wants to be in his arms in 2.5 seconds and never leave them.

It’s that blasted Auntie she can live without.

I don’t know when or how this happened (perhaps she’s read the blog), but my niece no longer as fond of me as she once was. Then again, she’s been unable to vocalize any sort of opinion until last year, so perhaps she’s always loathed my very existence. Maybe she’s just been biding her time, waiting for the chance to strike. In ten years when her body has caught up with her nefarious schemes, she’s probably put me in cryogenic statis and drop me in the depths of the ocean.

I’m onto you, Emmalyn.

I’m watching you.

Everytime I tried to hug, kiss, or play with my niece, she kicked, screamed, went running, or some combination of the three. She wanted nothing to do with Auntie. Mind you, Auntie was the one that changed her diapers, fed and clothed her (well partially. I never put pants on her because it was too much work), rocked her to sleep, and took her for long walks in her stroller. One year later, Auntie gets no love.

Papa Herman is a god among insects

I am the insect.

Papa Herman is the bees knees.

But that Auntie can piss off.

On her last night in Florida before she went home, I thought we were making progress. I thought that the love had finally returned. It was about 7:30 at night and I decided to change into my pajamas. Emmalyn was roaming the halls when suddenly she started following me into my room.

“Do you want to stay here or come in my room?” I asked her.

“I want to come with you,” she said sweetly.

When Emmalyn was just a lump of flesh I had no problems changing in front of her. However, now that she has developed opinions and the ability to voice them, things have changed. She feels more like a person now, so being in the nude in front of my niece feels odd. Before I started changing I made sure she was occupied with some figurines I have on my dresser.

What I failed to comprehend is that two year olds have the attention spans of two year olds.

Standing half naked in my room, with my back to the door, suddenly a face appeared at my knee, shocked and appalled. With as much ferocity as she could muster, Emmalyn squealed, “Auntie, put your boobies away!”

I have two things to say about this:

1)      That’s just hurtful

I was under the impression that I had very nice boobies

2)      Who on earth taught her “boobies”?

I asked my sister where Emmalyn got that word from and her response was, “I have no idea where she picked that up. We call them “nursers” in our house.”

 

Um…ok?

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Why teaching your children manners could backfire

Tags

child care, manner, politeness, toddlers

A prime example of this is the conversation I had with my sister yesterday. While she and I were trying to talk, I heard my niece in the background shouting “Mommy car! Mommy car!”

Me: What is she doing?

Kira: She standing by the window looking outside.

Me: Is there a car driving by?

Kira: No, she’s looking at my car. It’s very exciting to her.

Me: So the car is just sitting in the driveway?

Kira: Yeah, but I’d rather have her shouting than throwing up. She’s had a bad cough that’s been making her throw up.

Me: Ew.

Kira: There was vomit everywhere yesterday. She threw up on the carpet, on the changing table, finally I just put her in the bathtub to make the clean up easier.

Me: That’s really gross.

Kira: Wait, what is she-

(I hear shuffling on the line)

Kira: Emmalyn, if you don’t get down off the table you’re going to get a spank.

Emmalyn: No, thank you.

At least she’s polite when she’s being blatantly defiant.

Chi-chi has super powers

Tags

dirtbags, Emmalyn, Gyasi, inappropriate moments, toddlers

She can see into the future.

Or she just has common sense.

Which I lack.

About two weeks ago, Chi-chi and I were talking in the kitchen about Emmalyn. Chi-chi said, “You really need to watch what you say around your niece. She’s picking up words really quickly.”

“I don’t say inappropriate things around her.”

“You may not think what you say is inappropriate, but she’ll repeat it at an inappropriate moment.”

“Well, I call her ‘stinky’ or ‘monkey’ sometimes, but those are pet names. Like how Auntie Rachel calls me ‘doo doo’….why does Auntie Rachel call me ‘doo doo’?”

“It’s a pet name.”

Flash forward to this morning; I’m talking to my sister on the phone. Kira is in one of her “I told you so” fits and she’s ranting and raving against a co-worker she knew was no good.

“He quit just like that! All I had to do was think about firing him and he quit! Gyasi, it was almost too easy! I mean, now the boy has no job, no ambition, no plans, and two baby mamas! I don’t know what these people see in him! He’s a dirtbag! A complete dirtbag!”

In the background I heard an almost two-year-old voice say, “Dirtbag.”

When I told Chi-chi she went on one of her “I told you so” laughing fits.

“I told you so” fits run in the family.

Baby Guerilla

Tags

Peanut butter cookie

Emmalyn and Audrey have a tenuous relationship.

Sometimes they love each other dearly.

Other times they’re bent on making the other’s life miserable.

In a strange way, they’re more like siblings instead of a 15-month-old baby and an over the hill miniature poodle.

When they hate each other, the following will happen:

     One day, Emmalyn was being a good girl, so she received a cookie the size of her face. She’s at the age when she can finally appreciate a cookie. As her auntie who is hopelessly devoted to cookies, I’m glad we finally have something to connect over. A few months ago when she was still sharpening her motor skills into a fine point, I fed her a small piece of my peanut butter cookie. When my sister discovered what I had done because Emmalyn proceeded to sneeze bits of cookies onto her car seat, I was given a sound thrashing because babies aren’t supposed to have peanuts. Apparently, it can kill them.

    Who knew?

    Anyway, when Emmalyn received her cookie, she smiled, laughed, held it, and promised to love it from now until snack time they part. She was thoroughly excited about the cookie. Audrey was also very excited about the cookie and so she walked over, took the cookie out of Emmalyn’s hand with her teeth, and ate it. Then she walked away.

    The wail that Emmalyn emitted was similar to that of a banshee from the highlands.

    Or Banshee from the X-Men.

    Either one will do.

     Emmalyn is not the type to immediately respond to an attack, instead she’ll wait until an opportunity for total annihilation arises.

     That opportunity came only a few short days ago.

     Emmalyn and Audrey are about the same height and weight. In a battle royale, they’d be evenly matched, which is why they often resort to guerilla tactics. The only thing Emmalyn has on Audrey is a full diaper. When Emmalyn does her business, she adds about another five pounds to her backside, which comes in handy when she wants to exact revenge on Audrey.

    One day, when my sister was home with Emmalyn and Audrey, the two of them were playing on the floor (or seeing who would flinch first) when my sister said to Emmalyn, “How do we show the doggie we love her?”

    Emmalyn, full diaper and all, then proceeded to sit on the dog.

    The dog with epilepsy.

     Who shakes and twitches.

    For Emmalyn, love is a five letter word: abuse.

Sunday Edition

Tags

MTV, Sunday Edition

Image via Wikipedia

I don’t do well with boredom.

This is why you get a special Sunday Edition of howdoyoupronouncethat.

To be honest, I don’t have anything particularly interesting to write about. If left to my own devices I would be on facebook right now leaving snarky comments on walls. Actually, I did leave a snarky comment on my sister’s facebook wall. She said something about burning the candle at both ends and I said something like, “Stick your head in the oven again?”, but my memory’s a little fuzzy on that end. Thankfully, Joanna talked me down and suggested I do something constructive rather than offending the few friends I have that tolerate my violent and unpredictable mood swings. However, that’s an entirely separate blog post.

For the last four hours I’ve been watching Daria and battling an insane case of the munchies. For those of you who don’t remember the 90s, Daria was a cartoon on MTV about a cyncial, smart-mouthed teen and her family and friends. It’s fun, witty, and helped hone my sardonic disposition. Watching it is like watching my childhood. Only I didn’t wear combat boots in high school. I was a music/theatre geek. Actually my high school experience was a little less combat boot a little once more with feeling. My senior year I was voted Best Actress, however, I think that had less to do with my acting ability and more to do with the fact that I knew people.

This is not to say that I was popular in any way, shape, or form.

Thinking back on it now, I don’t think my high school had a popular group.

If it did then I was too self-absorbed to notice.

Yes, there were kids that many people knew, but I wouldn’t say they were popular. It wasn’t as though the ebb and flow of high school culture relied on their opinion. That’s why I’ll always have a special place in that hellmouth I call a heart for my high school. It wasn’t the most privileged place, but it had soul. Huh, I don’t really feel like waxing on and off about my high school.

It deserves it’s own blog post.

Instead I’ll share a new Emmalyn story with you all.

Around 6pm this evening, I received this picture from my sister.

At first I had a hard time making it out, until I read the caption “Emmalyn was playing with Dad’s glasses.”

Then I fell over laughing.

Poor He-Man.

About an hour later, my sister sent me this text, “Emmalyn just went in to Dad and he said, ‘You twist up my damn glasses. They can’t even sit on my face.'”

And he was so gung-ho about grandchildren…

The Emmalyn Chronicles continued…

Emmalyn was here for a visit during Easter.

And she knew that Auntie was having a hard time coming up with blog ideas.

God bless Emmalyn.

My sister and brother-in-law got here around 11 pm the day before Easter. My sister came flitting across the airport to meet me pushing Emmalyn, who was coming out of a Benadryl induced high. I thought that child was going to start waving gang signs and talking about gin and juice she was so glassy-eyed. My brother-in-law brought up the rear looking like a pack mule. He was carrying a diaper bag, a laptop bag, and a car seat. We treat him so badly…

We didn’t get to bed that night until 12-12:30 Easter morning, but Emmalyn was up bright and early at the crack of 7:30. Don’t ask me why, but I was watching Chitty Chitty Bang Bang instead of doing what good Christians around the world were doing: searching for their good shoes and yelling at each other to get out of the bathroom so they could brush their teeth. Easter morning is probably the most stressful morning for Christians. All Christians charity is lost and the majority of us have to spend the entire morning suppressing the urge to cuss out the woman who chose to wear a parade float as an Easter bonnet. But that’s beside the point.

Since Emmalyn and I were both up, I decided to set up the toy that Chi-Chi had bought her. The game that Emmalyn chose for us to play “Auntie, throw me into air so I can squeal and then pull your hair when you try to stop” wasn’t doing it for me. Chi-Chi had purchased a Fisher Price toy lawn mower for Emmalyn. It had a smiley face, much like real lawn mowers, sang about the ABCs, counted to 10, and was thoroughly creepy. I’ve always had a fear of talking inanimate objects, so putting that toy together was my Easter act of service. It took me about 20 minutes to put that thing together. 15 of those minutes were spent ripping through the packaging. Fisher Price wins the award for “Most Tape Put on Cardboard Packaging” I could have taped Emmalyn to a wall with the amount of tape that was on that box. Instead, I spent every two seconds saying, “That’s not for your mouth…No, not in your mouth…Emmalyn, don’t put that in your mouth…Should that be going in your mouth?” and so on and so forth.

After I freed the Lawn Mower of Nightmares from its sticky tomb, I attached all of the pieces and showed Emmalyn how to play with it.

She was entertained for all of 00.0009 seconds.

The rest of the morning we played, “Pull Auntie’s hair while she cries quietly to herself.”

The next day, I was greeted at the door by peals of laughter. Emmalyn was overcome with glee. I heard the Lawn Mower of Nightmares going off so I thought that they had finally bonded and were playing like normal people. (Well, person and inanimate object possibly possessed by the devil.) What sight greeted me as I stepped into the house? Was it the sight of my niece playing with the toy I had so lovingly put together for her?

Nope.

That only happens to people whose nieces love them.

My niece apparently lives to be the little black rain cloud drizzling over my life.

Instead of playing with the Lawn Mower of Nightmares, Emmalyn was playing with a water bottle. The kind that you put into a water cooler. The kind that is the same size as her.

She was moving it across the floor and this was akin to watching rockets go off on Mars.

To make matters worse, my sister and brother-in-law didn’t even take the Lawn Mower of Nightmares home with them. That piece of occult paraphernalia is still sitting in my house.

It watches me when I sleep.

You Killed My Apple!

Image via Wikipedia

   As though she knew Auntie was suffering from writer’s block, Emmalyn delivered material this weekend. There were many moments of hilarity, but one in particular sticks out.

    On Saturday, my sister’s in-laws invited us over for dinner. She decided to make apple crisp to bring to their house for desert. That afternoon we picked up the ingrediants from the store. Kira’s recipe calls for 6-8 large apples. We got seven.

    Tim came by just as Kira was started to bake and so the three of us, along with Emmalyn gathered in the kitchen to talk while she cooked. Tom was in the living room watching tv and so Emmalyn would run in there to play with him for a few minutes before coming back into the kitchen. Kira had already cut through about five apples and her pan was full. Emmalyn was reaching up for a piece so, as a joke, Kira handed her an apple the size of her head to play with.

   Emmalyn acted as though Kira had handed her a unicorn wrapped in glitter and dreams.  As fast as her small legs could carry her, she went running into the living room to show her father. Then she ran back into the kitchen, licking her apple with glee. She did this about five times before Tom came into the kitchen holding her apple. Emmalyn was on his heels watching him as he picked up a knife. Standing in front of her, Tom took the knife and cut into the apple.

    I don’t think the impact of what had happened really hit Emmalyn until Tom handed her the piece of the apple he had cut. She stood there for a second, unsure of what had occured, but when he walked away with the rest of her apple, she lost her ever-loving mind.

   Even though she only gave her typical one-year-old scream and ran after him, I’m pretty sure she was saying “YOU KILLED MY APPLE!!!!!!”

    Perhaps Tim, Kira, and I could have been more sympathetic to her plight, but we chose the low road and laughed at her.

My niece may be an evil genius

Tags

Batman, Evil Genius

    Or at the very least she could be a Batman villian when she gets older.

   Here’s the evidence to support my claim:

   1 ) When my sister’s epileptic dog was having a seizure, Emmalyn grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and flipped her over.

    2 ) She decided to forego crawling and learned how to walk instead.

    3 ) At eleven and a half months Emmalyn sent her first text message. It said, “LEEk$KKjkjkjJJKK$$m$$$$wesdSssdySdaee0 r” which I interpret to mean, “Hello Auntie, I just finished reading my first Dostoyevsky novel and I’d be delighted if we could discuss it over animal crackers and juicy juice during your next visit.”

    Happy 1st Birthday Emmalyn!

Stairs

    Emmalyn and the stairs reached a truce the other day.

    However, it was short-lived and now they’re at war again.

    Here’s what happened (according to my sister):

   She was in the kitchen while her husband was watching television Emmalyn and eating a candy cane. A couple suspiciously quiet minutes went by and so she poked her head into the living room. Her husband was sitting on the couch with his candy cane, but Emmalyn was nowhere in sight.

    “Babe, where’s Emmalyn?” she asked.

    “She’s on the stairs,” he answered.

    “Are you watching her? She’s still unsteady on stairs.”

    My sister’s husband got up from the couch, took a look at Emmalyn, who was euphoric over the stairs, realized she was ok, and sat back down on the couch with his candy cane.

    “She’s fine,” he said.

    Comforted with this answer, my sister went back about her business in the kitchen.

   Not ten seconds later, the weight of Emmalyn’s head got the best of her (again) and she fell down the stairs.

    In his defense my sister’s husband did throw his candy cane down and rush to her aid before she hit the ground. Alas, he was a second too late. To add insult to injury, the dog stole his candy cane.

    Emmalyn was furious with her father for letting her fall. She glared at him for the rest of the day and looked particularly murderous when he said, “Well, Emmalyn, I guess it’s time we get you some gates.”

    One day, Emmalyn, you’ll show those stairs who’s boss.

    Auntie has faith in you.

The Emmalyn Chronicles

   My niece is a maniac. She genetically predisposed to be a maniac.  Coming from a long line of maniacs whose madness has surpassed some of the finest insane minds of our generation, Emmalyn has the potential to outstrip them all. How do I know this, you ask? Why am I so convinced that a 10 month old infant will outdo us? What could she have possibly done to prove her brilliance?

    Well, I’ll tell you.

    After months and months of  toddling on her unsteady legs, Emmalyn has finally learned how to walk without assistance. Stairs are still her mortal enemies, but give her a flat plain and she’s walk for miles…well, not miles, maybe 3 ft.

    One day, while getting ready to start the day, Emmalyn leaves my sister in the bedroom to dress and goes exploring. My sister thinks nothing of this because Emmalyn is still at war with the stairs so there’s no chance of her attempting to climb down them. About a minute passes and suddenly my sister hears maniacal laughter coming from down the hall. Upon locating the source of the laughter, she finds Emmalyn sitting in the bathroom, maxi pads littering the floor. Emmalyn has pads stuck to her hands and is laughing so hard she is practically hysterical. 

   You see why she’ll surpass us all.

   My brother pulled a television set on his head.

   My sister ate paper like a goat.

   I threw eggs out of the fridge for entertainment.

   Emmalyn plays with Kotex.

   Bask in the brilliance. Bask.