Payback

Payback. I'm up to my ears in payback. My middle child, I adore him so, but he is fully capable of driving me nuts on a daily basis. He is wild and spunky and now looks directly at me while preparing to do something naughty and asks me in his sweetest voice, "Mama, you not look at me right now." In other words, "Turn your head Mama, because I'm fixing to do something really, really bad." Like today as I tried to get all three boys ready to go to the pool, I left the room to retrieve a towel and returned to find that he had emptied an entire bottle of sunscreen on the carpet. And not in one pile. No, he used it to "draw" lines and circles all over the place. When I gave him a swift pop on the tail, he turned and looked at me in an absolute state of shock. He was shocked and appalled that I would pop his cute behind for doing something as minor as ruining the carpet. He is an endless ball of energy, a silly wild man and a human wrecking ball that has clogged the toilet half a dozen times this week with his new affection for toilet tissue. And a little warning to any future guests at our home. Don't bend over. Don't lean over. Don't even reach down to tie your shoe. Because the very second he sees you bend at the waist he will mount you like a champion bareback rider. I have learned the hard way, when I least expected it. Like when I'm picking up toys and think the boys are in another room...I bend over and BAM! Just like that he is on my back. Or when I'm up to my elbows in poop as I change Will's diaper...BAM! His arms are wrapped around my neck and he's spurring my sides with his cowboy boots. Unloading the dishwasher, folding clothes, wiping his older brother's heine...BAM! I am safe nowhere, no time. And as if his daily shenanigans aren't enough to make me think I will lose my sanity before he enters kindergarten, he has begun giving me "the look." The look I gave my parents probably on a daily basis as a teenager. You know because I was just so smart and they were just so not. So Mama and Daddy, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for being that patience-testing middle child. Sit back and grin and have yourself a little chuckle at my expense. Because now I get the look on a daily basis, full of sarcasm and defiance,from my spirited two year old. Payback, courtesy of my middle child.