The thing about babies

So you know babies? Sometimes I think they can be real jerks. Not jerks like parking in the “Customers with Infants” parking spots even when you clearly do not even have a car seat jerks or throwing your trash on the ground when there’s a trash can right there jerks or driving down the shoulder of the highway in traffic and then flipping me off when I don’t let you cut in jerks. Those kinds of jerks are doing it on purpose. Because they are jerks. But babies, babies just think they’re being funny. For example, mine thinks it’s really hilarious to hit me in the face with stuff. Spoons, sippy cups, his hands. HILARIOUS. As far as I know I’ve never reinforced this behavior in any way – you don’t much feel like laughing when you’ve just taken a spatula to the eye – but no matter how many firm, purposeful “NO”‘s I say he keeps doing it. Jerk.

Baby Evan also likes to play a game called “Let’s do the total opposite of the thing my mommy just said I always do”. So, for example, if I have just finished telling my friends how he’s really started to understand the sign for and word “Stop!” when he’s being naughty, he will immediately throw toys or bite me (did I mention the biting?) or yank the curtains right off the wall, no matter how many times I say “STOP! MAKE WISE CHOICES!” Or I’ll explain how we’ve FINALLY been making progress in the solid food department and Baby Evan ate a whole mini-pretzel just this morning so he would love it if you shared your baby’s snack with him. And then he spits soggy, half chewed Goldfish all over someone’s Vera Bradley diaper bag. Jerk.

Of course, then there’s the opposite baby, the one who screams and thrashes in his car seat, tries to throw himself out of my arms onto the parking lot pavement and kicks me while I buckle him into the shopping cart, only to be the SMILIEST, HAPPIEST, FRIENDLIEST baby even in the History Of The World while I do the grocery shopping. By the time I’m pushing him through the dairy aisle he’s made four new friends and all of them have said “Oh what a goooood baby you are. Is he always such a gooooood baby?” Of course I say yes. They don’t really want to hear about the screaming. Because then I’d look like a jerk.

There’s a chance I’m being unreasonable and childish and a Terrible Mother for saying these things. Maybe. But you didn’t have to clean crap off of EVERYTHING when Baby Evan has a poopsplosion yesterday and then rolled around in it. On the carpet. Laughing. Jerk.

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2 Responses to “The thing about babies”

  1. MKP says:

    My dad’s reading this book on the male brain, and said that by 6 months, both male and female babies have learned when their mothers want them to stop doing something. But by 10 months, boy babies have learned to ignore it. Girls are more likely to keep obeying. Or maybe they just feel guiltier about being jerks.

  2. brigidkeely says:

    Babies are totally and entirely jerks. Absolutely. The end.

    I mean, what other humans will just stand there and shove each other in an attempt to get at the bowl of cherios on the floor, only to them dump the cherios all over the place and grind them into the carpet? Jerks. Babies. One and the same.

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