11 November 2011

Glimpses

This morning's Facebook status:

The good news is that I took a personal day and get to take E to pre-school this morning. The bad news is that afterwards I get to work on a 20 paper for round 2 of comps. So, yay! And also, ugh.

It's silly, really, that they give me 4 weeks to work on such a paper when I am obviously going to do it over one weekend. This is relevant to this blog post, however, because it means that I am saving every bit of coherency I possess for the paper-writing extravaganza that will begin at 9AM. The blog therefore gets whatever rambling drivel I happen to think about typing while trying to wrestle Eamon into clothes for school.

(Hi, future Eamon! This is my attitude for documenting your childhood! You're welcome!)

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Scene 1

6:15AM: I enter Eamon's bedroom.

"Mommy," he says somberly. "I had a bad dream."

"Oh, dear. What was this one about?"

"Swiper," he says, invoking the name of the wily fox on Dora the Explorer who, well, swipes things. He is the main component of 95% of Eamon's bad dreams.

"Oh, that Swiper. What did he do this time?" I ask.

"He took Daddy's pants."

While the image of a 43-foot long, slavering T-Rex only inspires thoughts of joyful frolicking through a prehistoric funscape, the thought of a small cartoon fox who can easily be defeated by the phrase, "Swiper, no swiping!" is the stuff of soul-crushing nightmares for my 2 year old.

Also...Daddy's pants? Huh? Why?

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Scene 2

4:45AM: I awake to desperate screams of "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!"

I rush into Eamon's room. "What's wrong?" I gasp, still reeling from the sudden shot of adrenalin coursing through my body.

Eamon sobs, "I lost Zurg. Where Zurg?"

I stare blankly at him. He cannot seriously have woken me up to search for a two inch tall plastic replica of a Toy Story character. I mention as much (or rather, the adrenaline does) then stumble back to bed while he quietly cries himself back to sleep in this now post-Zurg world in which kittens have ceased to gently mew, butterflies refuse to flit softly, and all is dark and only despair can reign from now until the end of our pointless, pathetic existences.

It then takes me about 45 minutes to come down off the adrenaline high and go back to sleep...until 5:30, which is when my alarm goes off. Of course, I ignore it and wake up at 6:15, which means we are now officially Running Late.

I burst back into Eamon's room to wake him up and get the day started. Feeling slightly guilty about my lack of compassion at 4:45, I allot 2 minutes to look for Zurg.

But there is no need. Eamon sits up, smiling, holding the small plastic toy.

"Where did you find that?" I ask.

He laughs. "In my hand. Oops. Silly Eamon." I reflect that one day, this will probably be really funny. But not today.

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Scene 3

4:26PM: At Eamon's pre-school conference night, we see another mother. Her daughter is about a year younger than Eamon, so about to turn 2.

The mother confides that every night during their prayers, the little girl always seems really confused.

"I think it's when we say 'Amen,'" Mom explains. "She keeps looking around the room. Finally we realized that she thinks we're saying 'Eamon.'"

I bet she wonders why her parents are so darn obsessed with that little boy from school.

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Scene 4

6:57AM

"Eamon, smile for the camera. I need to post a blog and document your childhood so that one day you we can all look back and remember to laugh about that Zurg incident."



"Eamon! What the heck was that? You look like you're going to be sick. I need a nice smile so we can all look back and think about how nice everything was."



"Eamon! Come on. Please?!"



"Okay, seriously, kiddo..."



"Eamon, come out of the blanket. Please. I promise I'll stop if you just smile once. Just one picture I can use. Please."



"Aw, thank you, darling. And if anyone asks, you did that because you finally saw reason and wanted to help your mother out, and not because I just made barnyard animal noises until you finally started giggling. Okay?"

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