It's a cool morning. Your toddler is still asleep and your oldest is at school. You went to bed at 9 last night like some sort of weird 20-something geriatric hybrid, and so you're feeling rather rested. Your coffee is also hot. This is an anomaly.
It's time to write.
You boot up your computer, gather the few things you need to succeed at this task and settle into it. One pristine line later, your toddler throws his cup across his bedroom floor and shouts "MAHMEE" with a vaguely imperious tone. It's as if he knows you were trying to do something that didn't involve him, and he wasn't about to have that. His "Alone Time Radar" went off and snapped his eyes open like in the horror movies, when the camera pans in on the 'dead' face of the killer, only for one final scare.
Maybe he will settle back down, you tell yourself, typing with desperation adding itself to your speed. Your toddler finds a "My Little Pony" toy and rattles it loudly across the bars of his crib like someone begging for alms but also being really annoying at it on purpose.
Resignedly, you set your computer on the breakfast bar. You can just stand there and write through the day, you suppose. Your house grows suspiciously quiet and horror fills your heart; you slam your cup down and race up the stairs to find that your toddler has pooped himself, and then decorated everything around him with it. Tribal symbols of crap traced all over his body are a fine bonus.
An hour later, he is clean and so is his room. You lug him downstairs and and offer him a snack. He refuses. You offer him three more snacks, each eliciting a shriek of rage. You offer him the first snack. He snatches it out of your hand and scowls at you for not offering it in the first place.
Where were you? Ah, yes. He is fed, diapered and clothed. You put Fraggle Rock on for him because you're a 90s kid and you are too good for today's cartoons, but he begins to holler "YOGUYS."
"YOGUYS," you find, is toddler speak for "Yellow Guys," which you regretfully realize means Minions. Damn your top tier toddler translating skills.
Fine. Your coffee is cold, but you learned long ago that hot drinks go the way of the dinosaur after you have kids. You can either reheat it five times before 10 a.m., or learn to like it cold. You opt for the latter. If you pretend really hard, it almost tastes like Starbucks.
"Minions" is on, the spawn is fed, clothed and content. You turn back to your computer and type another paragraph. A sharp agony enters your leg; your toddler has bitten you for the sin of not paying attention to him. "But why!" you scream. "I even put on 'Minions' for you!" He doesn't care.
It's been two hours since you started writing. You manage to tap out one more sentence between pulling him out of the toilet, forbidding him from jumping off the couch (which he does anyway), telling him to stop hitting the cat (he ignores you), and suggesting he eat another bite of his peanut butter sandwich. He refuses, running away while screaming, which you think is an overreaction. You eat the sandwich. He sees you do this and bursts into bitter tears of betrayal. You're a monster.
Where were you? Your cursor blinks on the half-empty Word document, tantalizing you. Your toddler stretches his arms up, and your heart melts. Your mind dumps all memory of the atrocities he's committed so far, and you settle down for a cuddle. Writing can wait. This is what matters most.
You stroke his soft hair and he curls into your embrace, patting your arms and touching your cheeks, while you sing to him and read out of a book he destroyed by waterboarding it in the dog's bowl.
You close your eyes and hold him close, breathing in the baby scent of his body. Your toddler, master of deception, takes this tender and vulnerable moment to hit you in the face, rendering you temporarily blind while he leaps out of your arms and runs away laughing.
It's now time to get his sister from school and you have written one paragraph. Oh, well. At least you got a baby cuddle and temporarily warm coffee out of it..
