This Is The Motherload of Misery They Were Talking About.

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It’s my honest opinion that Scarlett is becoming kind of a psychopath.

To be fair, she was never really not crazy before, so it’s not like I’m being caught completely off-guard. She was ten months old when she threw her first balls-out temper tantrum, and ever since her father and I have attentively (and even somewhat admiringly) taken note of the fact that the healthier and stronger and more brilliantly energetic she becomes with age, the crazier she shows us she is.

I say admiringly because back then… you know, before she could throw stuff, her temper - however big for her age - was still packaged small enough not to have to duck for cover from.

Nonetheless: “This one is going to be a real pain in the ass.” is a phrase we’ve gravely exchanged many-a-time during her infancy. Yes, I said infancy, and no I don’t feel bad for it either. Because we were right. And it’s not like we ever held it against her. If anything, we exalted her for it. (‘What a personality!’ We’d always say. This is what parents of difficult children always say to make themselves feel better for having unruly, nutcase children.) Scarlett was too helpless to be unruly as a baby, but she was definitely a high-maintenance nutcase right out of the gate. I could tell it by the way she cried the day she was born. It was the way my mom always described my oldest brother’s cry. She practically warned me about that cry. And I recognized it immediately.

And this is a child who never, not once in her entire babyhood teethed. Which, from what I hear is really supposed to be the only thing babies who aren’t colicky are even capable of doing that’s difficult.

So you can imagine how, now that she is an all-the-more capable, irrational and ridiculously short-fused toddler, that whole teething thing is going down.

Yeah.

NOT WELL.

My child hates life on an epic scale right now. In the span of… three months I guess, Scarlett has popped six enormous teeth. And judging simply by how many fucked-up notches she’s kicked up the crazy in the past three or four days, I think it’s fair to say that the rest are coming in all at once. NOW. Just like everyone told me they would.

Everyone said the same thing when Matthew was a year old before he got any of his teeth, too. They said that by the time they did come in, they’d be coming in all once and that he would drop a motherload of misery on us, the likes of which we poor inexperienced parents could not even comprehend. But it wasn’t that bad at all. Especially because the worst of it happened while his dad and I were hundreds of miles away on our week-long Floridian honeymoon and the most we had to endure of it was my mom calling our hotel room to tell us that Matthew was practically dying of an ear infection. We felt really bad about it, but then accidentally wound up on a topless beach about ten minutes later and forgot about it pretty fast. By the time we got back home he was totally normal. (Best baby ever, that kid.)

I love Scarlett to death, but I don’t think a single day of her infancy/early toddler hood has been easy on us. It’s been joyous and all that, for sure. But certainly nothing resembling easy.

　

And honestly, I’m okay with that. I am.

I’m really just taking the time to write it down because I’m clinging to the hope that her being a tyrannical maniac-child now means that she’ll be a delicate flower in her preschool years; that she’ll inexplicably transform the way that Matthew did around the age of two, except in the opposite direction. You know, the way that evolves out of being a lunatic instead of into it. Remember how I said Matthew was the best baby ever? Yeah…. Let’s just say that if some kind of magical transition doesn’t work out in my favor this time around, I’m going to feel really jipped.

　

Let’s hope they’re just tag-teaming me on a larger scale. Otherwise, I’m really in for it when Scarlett’s three and Matthew, (maniac that HE is) turns six. As for right now? Mary holds the title for being the least difficult child. And really, that's just ludicrous. I think even she herself would agree with me on that one.