terrible twos

Maybe it's because he doesn't talk that much (although he has recently added mama, bubble, pop, and waffle to his vocabulary, along with a quack, a bark, and an oink), or maybe it is because he is my little baby (with chubby cheeks and fat thighs and solid feet that can fit in my palm), but I haven't been giving Jack enough credit for being an asshole 2 year-old.

Until the other morning.

When I had to get ready for work for the first time since Jack dropped his morning nap.

I used to have it easy, little did I know. I'd leave the house with both kids and drop them at child watch before preschool. I'd grab a workout, collect them from the daycare, deposit Harry at school, and pull into my garage just in time to plunk a drowsy Jack in his crib. Then I would have a snack, drink more coffee, spend a leisurely hour/ ninety minutes perusing the internet and then jump up all pissy because I had to take a shower, get dressed, fold all the laundry, and make lunch in like 45 minutes, so I could rouse Jack, collect crabby Harry from school, and feed them before the babysitter arrived.

And I had the nerve to bitch about that set up.

Today, I had to shower, get dressed, do the laundry, make lunch, and slam dinner in the crock pot ALL WITH JACK BY MY SIDE. It was rough, man. He has some sort of toddler laser vision that allows him to enter a room and assess what is most dangerous and messy, so he can immediately fuck with those things. Blind cords. Dirty dishes in the dishwasher. My glass-bottled toiletries. At one point after he stopped blissfully throwing books from the shelf to the floor, chortling all the while, he scampered over to my drawer, retrieved my deodorant, and licked it like an ice cream cone until I noticed and stopped him. He flung himself off his new potty seat and tried to jump off the bed. He emptied the tupperware cabinet and threw all the DVDs all over the living room. He merrily put the oven on "clean" and opened the cabinet where we keep the glasses, so he could roll wine glasses across the room to knock over a sack of refrigerator magnets.

It was hell.
And when Harry is a little squirrel while I am getting ready, I can at least bribe him with TV or threaten to put his toys in time out, or at least be kind of pissed off. You can't get pissed at a 2 year-old, not really. They learn best by testing, exploring, doing, tearing shit up, and saying no when you tell them to do something.
I heard a horrible crash while I was in the shower and jumped out, dripping wet, to see what happened. No big deal-- Jack just tried to climb into his dragon cave -- kind of like this:

Oh morning nap, I miss you so much.