Is it just me, or have the last two weeks been nearly unmanageable? Isaac is like a miniature blond Travis Bickle . He's perpetually shirtless, cut, and hostile, ready for a fight. "You talkin' to ME?" His little body is now so wiry, and tight, and his muscles by far the most clearly defined of anyone in the family. His behavior is intermittently horrible: rude, uncooperative, provocative. It's not even about tantrums these days. It's about RAGE.
For his part, Elias is bent on self-destruction. His newest innovation: getting furniture to fall on himself. The other day it was "quiet time" which I now flat-out insist upon, futile though that clearly is. I was beyond exhausted, half dead, lying down. Isaac was watching a video (if his mind rots, I truly don't care. I CAN'T care. This is the only way he sits still for more than three minutes.) Elias was playing quietly. He and I were upstairs, with the gate closed. Which means that his playing area was limited to our bedroom, and the bedrooms of the two boys, both of which are about as child-proof as possible. So then inevitably there's a dreadful crash and scream. I bolted vertically and horizontally towards the sound– there was Elias. He had opened the drawer to his dresser (which thankfully is quite small), and climbed in it. The dresser had tipped over on him, pinning his legs in the drawer. I extricated him from that, determined that he was unharmed, and began setting the dresser back upright. At that moment I noticed that the lamp had fallen over too, and broken open such that there was an exposed wire sticking out. Elias was now grabbing at that wire, and the lamp was still plugged in! I got that away from him in time…
I told my mother about this and she replied, "Sheesh– his guardian angel must be working overtime."
Was Isaac this awful? I can't remember it being this horrible to try to keep him safe. But when I look back upon it, several things were different. First of all, I only had Isaac. So, if I needed to simply follow him everywhere at all times, I could do that. Secondly I had Zimbabwean Sheila 7 hours a week, so I could go get a cup of tea and collect my thoughts at regular intervals so I wasn't always in a state of total frazzlement. Thirdly I had dottering old Dorothy once a week. She was nearly ineffective as a cleaning lady, but the one thing she did well was laundry. She would get the laundry completely caught up, and put clean sheets on the bed, so that there was some sort of possibility of household functioning. Yes… so the reality is I now have two children and much less help. Also, I still have Isaac and he's about the most difficult person I've ever met, and I include famous tyrant Diana Trilling on that list.
One thing I've been realizing about myself lately is that I have an introverted streak a mile wide. The way I need to regroup and recharge is basically to read– doesn't have to be a long time, even a half hour a day non-contiguous. I didn't know this until it was completely taken away from me. When people are up in my grill 14 hours a day, and I'm not exaggerating, I get irritable. I get stretched beyond my limit. I get maxed out on interaction in and of itself. Add to that a child who is apparently trying to get bad attention any way he can (smashing tomatoes on the patio, whipping a wet diaper at my face) and it's a formula for unhappiness.
I tell you, I've been sorely tried.
And oddly I think of myself as having quite a LONG fuse. I'm not a hot-head, really. Except lately. Recent example: yesterday my friend Martha called to talk about going to the Natural History Museum with the kids. I opened my computer to check the weather. This was literally a three-minute conversation, to the benefit of the children, no less. And there was Elias, trying his damnedest to push the off button and make my computer shut down, while at the same time Isaac was stepping on the chord trying to unplug it. Can I tell you how outraged this sort of thing makes me!? Can they just back off for five minutes???
No, apparently not.
One point made by the spirited child book is that your ultra perceptive spirited child is the barometer of the household. He will absorb and display whatever the others in the house are feeling. The last two weeks Ben has been in really a pressure cooker at work. Avoiding all details, it's been MEGA tense. Ben has done his utter best to contain it, but there's no doubt that it's spilled over into the house. Perhaps Isaac is something of the house's living id.
At the same time, there's the OTHER Isaac. The normal and good Isaac. This is the sunny child who is such a great conversationalist. On good days, we have a lovely time together. Wednesday, for instance, we spent the whole day doing nothing, never happier nor busier. We were working on a project I've had on the back burner for ages– hanging this wind chime on the play structure such that kids can play it with a stick. It's one of those tuned pipe wind chimes and it plays I think an E flat chord. Isaac embraced the project, we got out the drill. Elias played around happily and Isaac and I worked as a team without any fighting.
In the midst of this totally bucolic afternoon, we ran across the most wonderful luck. Hiding right in the middle of the play structure, in this odd little place Isaac would never have looked into were it not for the chime project, was an amphibian! He was totally concealed by his lichen-dry wood-disguise, but Isaac saw his eye blink! So then the excitement was on to catch him. Much screaming and running about ensued, with the frog hopping huge distances to elude us, and also doing this amazing thing where he hopped high into the air and then stuck, velcro-like to the side of something. At one point, he did this and stuck securely right on my shoulder. I'll admit to getting hysterical, but nonetheless I also caught him in a critter tote. He has yellow underpants! He's slimy! He's a gray tree frog .
So we spent the whole rest of the day making his habitat and learning about his needs, laying around in the grass trying (fruitlessly, pretty much) to catch him crickets. We got him a big fern to sit on, and indeed he's changed himself completely from gray to green. (My mother says she saw one once on a hubcap, doing his best to become silver.) My favorite Isaac quote for the day: "It's hard to be a glutton with no food in your belly!" (referring to the little hop toad we also have rooming in with Froggy.)
THAT Isaac is great. That's the brilliant, charming, handsome, winning Isaac that most of us know and love. The other, evil Isaac… wow. He's hell on wheels. He's been out a lot lately. I'm wondering if the BIG transition back to school is starting to take effect already? Causing (hopefully) temporary insanity? I can only hope that school, which will start for him half days on August 25th, will help.