Wednesday 18 September 2013

No Son of Mine

I've had the Phil Collins song No Son of Mine stuck in my head for days now. I blame two people: 1) my grade seven music/French teacher who made us analyse and perform the song because she had an unhealthy obsession with Phil. 2) Jack who has taken over the crown of "evil twin" for a couple of weeks now.* His recent behaviour seems really out of character and is directed mostly at Chris.

There has been a shift in the powers that be in our household over the past few weeks. It started off slowly, Molly eased up on the tantrums and focused her efforts on "helping". She genuinely enjoys tidying, carrying and bringing us things and we are ecstatic.** Miss Molly has slowed her efforts in the tantrum department and seems to understand, as well as a two year old can, that whining does not get you anything.    The tantrum sabbatical is appreciated and noted.

We had about two days of peace until it happened.   The thing that I'd been warned about by other twin parents, they switched. At daycare pickup I was informed that Jack gets really upset when other kids around him fight.  Understandable, but instead of trying to break it up he acts like a wrestler and starts throwing chairs. The chair launching continued at home.  Whenever he got frustrated he'd pick up a chair and toss it. In other feats of strength  "Rowdy Roddy Piper" has also been pushing our giant coffee table around the floor just to show he can.*** When we reprimand him and give him time outs, Miss Molly is right behind us wagging her finger in Jack's face saying, "No Jack, All Done Jack, All Done." I'm kind of worried she's going to be the recipient of a folding chair in the back of the head for her need to repeat parental messaging with a finger pointed two inches away from his face.****

 Perhaps some taber tossing of the see-saw is in order?

The other day Jack was playing with the channel changer, trying to figure out the concept of how batteries work. Chris sat nearby and supervised as Jack took the batteries in and out of the remote to make sure he wasn't going to eat them or hurt himself. The remote was confiscated when Jack wanted to see how well dad's BBQ chips would work as an energy source and began cramming them into the battery compartment. After Chris took the remote, Jack flipped out. He chased Chris around the house trying to hit him. We were on our way out the door so Chris wanted to avoid the usual time-out because we were already running late.  Big mistake. Parenting short-cuts often bite us.

Jack was determined to punish Chris. He went back into the media room and grabbed a handful of Chris's records, took them into the kitchen and started whipping them on the floor at Chris's feet.***** As he hurled a German Drinking Songs record onto the floor, directly in front of Chris I couldn't help but feel a little proud. What he was doing was smart, albeit mean. It was near impossible not to laugh. The following day when Jack threw a chair we gave him a time out. During time-out he learned how to scale the wall of his crib, busted into the washroom and started to run himself a bath. There's a new evil genius in the house.  Molly better watch her back, literally.


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*No one is planning on leaving in a dramatic fashion, however we do have trains running behind our house frequently, similar to the noises in the beginning of Phil's "masterpiece".
**Clearly we wanted carrier pigeons not children and misunderstood how things would work as parents.
***I think that he's trying to intimidate us.
****Not that our house is ripe with stadium seating.
*****It was kind of reminiscent of the record Zombie scene from Shaun of the Dead, but with a lot less apathy.

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