I remember being a kidlet myself and thinking that other kidlets made no sense whatsoever. This was when I was around nine or ten years old. If I was not able to comprehend a childhood mind even when a child, I suspect I have no chance at all in understanding it now. This lack of comprehension can lead to my simply staring blankly at my children in the hopes that I will somehow understand what on earth possessed them to do whatever they did. My offspring seem to intuitively grasp this fact, and they exploit it whenever possible. "Mommy doesn't understand what we are thinking at the moment. Quick! Put your muddy shoes on your hands and walk them up the freshly painted walls!"
This afternoon, Pig Jr. and I wrapped up his Christmas gifts to the other members of the family. I had him walk both of his sisters' gifts out to the tree and carefully put them underneath its lit branches. He managed this task wonderfully, so I erroneously assumed he could carry his father's gift out next. Note: his father's gift was the only one of the three that was breakable. Which gift did my son drop? Naturally, it was the breakable one. Sorry, Pig. If you're reading this, well, I tried to let our son do things like a big kid.
Rooster was not nearly as damaging to physical objects as her younger brother was. However, she did not stop talking in the entire time she was awake. She followed me around like a little lost puppy dog, and whined at me until I was ready to pull my hair out in clumps. There was a running commentary for everything. "Someone from my class that I've never mentioned before looks just like his father and I know this because his father was reading to us out in the hallway at school, and he and his father look almost exactly alike except that he had a mustache and the other he didn't, and that would be silly if it was the other way around because boys my age don't have mustaches, at least not yet, and I don't know why not if they don't shave yet because I think they should be able to grow a mustache if they want to, but not a beard because those look funny, and why are you looking like your head is hurting you right now Mommy?" While I was trying to help Pig Jr. with wrapping paper and tape, Rooster was talking through the closed door at me until I hollered for her to just go away or we could not get her present under the tree. She resumed the nonstop chatter right about the same time Pig's Christmas present was shattering in the hallway.
And then there's Horse. She spent a lot of time dilly-dallying on the walk home from school. She skipped, kicked at leaves, spun herself around to make her lunchbox fly up in the air, and walked backwards. She acted as if she never wanted to reach our front door. Once we entered the house and a younger sibling needed to go to the bathroom, she shrieked and hollered at him through the closed door. "Hurry up! I really have to go potty! Why are you making me wait?" The kid who took two minutes to walk up the four front steps because she was looking for lost pennies on our front yard threw a conniption because she had to wait ten seconds to go to the bathroom.
Horse and her homework also made me twitch. She spent almost three hours working on homework today. This was after over two hours to finish it yesterday, too. She's nine. There is no way homework should take so long to complete. Yesterday, she had told me she had to finish her schoolwork that had mysteriously not been finished during school, and then she had homework on top of that. Today, she told me she had four spelling assignments that were all due tomorrow. When I asked, shocked, why so much homework was piled onto them for spelling, she confessed that all four assignments were given out on Monday, and she did not feel like doing them any other day this week, including the one day she had no homework. Horse took advantage of my uncomprehending, jaw-dropped stare to hurry and finish up to avoid the procrastination spiel that was stuck on the tip of my tongue. Too bad my tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth at the time.
I do love my kidlets, but I do not understand them at all, and these are the people who are going to be choosing my nursing home someday. Heaven help me.
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