oy. is it possible for a not-quite-ten-month-old to morph into a wild, wilfull toddler overnight?

is it normal that now that O’s noticing the world around him, he wants to touch/taste/bite ALL of it, NOW? is it weird that suddenly he’s waking up at bloody 5:15 am every morning and screaming his little head off to get up, already? is it selfish that i don’t want my day to start that early? ever? particularly when it’s a saturday morning and i’ve been up until 1:30 am with old friends who are in town briefly, and mack trucks are playing bumper cars inside my tender skull?

and is it wrong to consider selling the child to gypsies, at least for a weekend, just to get some sleep?

and does anyone know any nice, nurturing gypsies who might be interested?

i think if i’d had the wherewithal to operate a computer on saturday morning, my beloved Oscar would have gone up on ebay with a “free to a good home” sign around his sweet little neck. then i would have come to my senses (with the aid of coffee…much coffee) and kept him, of course.

of course.

i know i’m pushing people’s buttons all over the place, just saying things like this. they’re parental blasphemy…the kind of casual slagging that causes pain and incurs wrath among people who’ve struggled to have children, or are who have themselves been relinquished by parents…or who wish to defend the good name of perfectly pleasant gypsy folk. i know. i know well, actually. i’ve been those people…baffled and wounded by others’ callous attitudes toward their precious kids…and i’ve been the kid left behind, too. Dave & i went through numerous circles of hell to have this boy. we love him. we want him to grow up to have good self-esteem, and while positive relationships with imaginary travelling gyspy bands might help develop this quality in him, i’m thinking that threatening to give him away probably isn’t our best strategy for supporting his self-confidence and security.

i know. and i don’t mean it, anyway.

but wow, is he a grumpy baby these days. and wow, is 5:15 early. i think, when my mental circuitry has had rest enough to function logically, that he’s simply excited by all that he’s almost able to do, and frustrated because he can neither communicate nor locomote well enough to accomplish those fascinating tasks. plus he’s tired, because he’s too excited to sleep properly. he just wants, and wants, and wants. and i know that’s his job. but i want, too. i want to sleep, and i want to be a good mother, and i want to help him learn to deal with his wants in a reasonable way. now, i’m reading my “Baby Whisperer” diligently, and working on sleep solutions and trying to offer both stimuli and calm to Oscar throughout his day. and i keep telling myself “this too shall pass.”

the sarcasm works better, though. my own flip comments make me smile, and then i keep going, smiling at the shouting little bundle of grump that my offspring has become. this is probably one of those self-sabotaging coping mechanisms that get passed down in families, dysfunction infecting multiple generations, insidiously turning Oscar into a snide, sardonic, twisted human being.

like his mother.

at least then he’d be smiling, though, however bitchily, and not just howling at the world in frustration. poor little grumpopotamus. time to get to work on that baby sign stuff with him, i think….and then we’ll both take a nap. :)