He just pushed me over.

So, there’s been something that I have been trying to avoid admitting for some time now.

Some call this denial;

because if I say it, if I write it, then it becomes true.

But, at this point I have to dive into the deep end of the ocean of crazy and just admit what we all already know:

My son is a maniac.*

Don’t get me wrong. I freaking love this kid. He tickles me and surprises me and makes me happy and proud.

But Lord, he is a maniac.

And this is the thing that I am going to say that I am not supposed to say:

He is exactly what I feared when the Ultrasound Tech announced, at 12 weeks, that  I was having a baby boy.

See?

I am not supposed to say that.

But I am saying it.

I can remember standing in the hospital’s outpatient lab, right after my surprising ultraound, and thinking, “Maybe they were wrong. People get these things wrong. And let’s say they are not wrong. This is great. A healthy baby. One of each. And I am not going to be one of those people with a crazy boy. I will have a chill, zen boy, just like my daughter and I. He will be cuddly and calm and I will totally kick nature’s ass with my dose of nurture.”

Well, that, my friends, is what we call “wishful thinking”. Or, as I said, denial.

My son is, as they say, all boy. I do not make gender stereotypes (I have linked to a more extensive disclaimer that I made earlier) but there are some things that just are and in my case they have proven to be true.

My son has perpetually scraped knees.

My son takes the discarded beans from our Bean Boozle Challenge and happily chomps away at “lawn clippings” and “baby wipes”.

He dives head first into everything, both literally and physically. He knows how to work electronics better than I do (and this is not an exaggeration. I have to ask him to turn off our living room TV for me). He searches for the most dangerous thing in the room and then finds a way to make it his.

My son is a maniac.

But, he is also so sweet and cute. He is starting to really talk, and I love it when he cuddles his Muno doll at night and puts his head on my shoulder. He dances to music and gives spontaneous (though sporadic) hugs. He is funny as hell.

Except for when he’s not.

I have written extensively on here about his many calamities (slit open wrist, CO poisoning, possible dog medicine ingestion, several calls to poison control, just to name a few) but now he is starting to be actively naughty.

And on Friday, it reached what I would call a critical point. Let me set the scene.

We keep our glass cups out of reach for obvious reasons. Being the smart little devil that he is, he found the one glass he could reach, the one my husband had left on his bedside table, and brought it downstairs into the middle of the kitchen. Then, he opened the refrigerator, took out the bottle of orange juice and poured himself a glass. And by that I mean he dumped an entire bottle of orange juice onto my kitchen floor.

I came down, saw the scene, and was just frozen.

“When did I become the one who has to start cleaning these things up?” I thought.

And then, he scampered in, wearing nothing but his Camp T-shirt and a diaper, and he started to swim in the orange juice pond. This is not a metaphor.

And then, he opened his mouth, licked the ground and started trying to drink the OJ off of the floor.

I actually laughed.

And then I started to try to clean up the enormous mess.

IMG_2354As I moved from paper towels to dishtowels to bath towels, my son scurried away once again. I was distracted by the ocean of OJ, but figured that he had been alone for 2 minutes, so I should check on him.

And this is what I found.

IMG_2356Yes. That would be my 20 month old with the dangerous, hot part of the popcorn maker that he brought into the living room so that he could plug in.

Where are the outlet covers, you ask? He removed them, skillfully.

(Side note: When it comes to getting stuff done, my son is pretty remarkable. He knows how to open, close, maneuver, plug-in, etc. better than my 5 year old; better than I do!)

So, I screamed, grabbed the machine and put it on a high shelf and then I heard a thud.

It was coming from the basement. My son had gotten into the Laundry Room. In it, he had found his favorite toy. The vacuum cleaner. And he was carrying it up the stairs. My son, carrying a full-sized vacuum cleaner up the stairs.

I could not put out one fire without another one starting (almost literally).

The next half hour was pure chaos. It was him doing things that ranged from naughty to dangerous and me, frantic, and trying to keep up.

At one point he put on a Janis Joplin record.

That was our high point.

Finally, I got him to sit and settle in front of the television and I went into the kitchen to try to finish cleaning up the original orange juice mess.

And that is when I realized that he had taken our Brita water filter, turned it to the “on” position, and filled our entire fridge with water.

Drawers, condiment racks, water water everywhere.

And so, I waved my flag of defeat. I sat down on a towel in the middle of the kitchen floor and I cried.

I rarely cry in front of my children. My daughter saw me first.

“It’s OK, mom. It’s OK. Let me help you. I can handle this, OK? Just let me take care of the situation.”

And then my son, sensing he was missing out on the fun, came in, shirt soaked in juice, face covered in oreo and, likely, dirt and he looked at me, sitting there, cross-legged on the kitchen floor, tears streaming down my face.

He looked at me in the eyes, his bright blue irises piercing mine.

He came towards me.

“OK,” I thought. “My sweet boy is back and we can have a great laugh about this later.”

And then he just pushed me over.

Just flat out took his hands and knocked me down.

At this point, I was sobbing, my daughter was simultaneously consoling me while trying to manage her brother, who had unlocked and opened the oven, climbed onto the door and was digging out kitchen utensils from a side drawer, and, like an angel from heaven, my mom walked through the door.

“I think I have a maniac boy,” I cried, as she swept into action like only mothers can.

So, the moral of the story is this:

Every child–every person–is unique. Nature and nurture are not mutually exclusive. Kids are messy. It’s hard being a grown up. It’s OK to cry. Sometimes someone will literally kick you when you are down. That person may be your child.

Drawers of water can be emptied. Floors can be mopped. Torn apart flower arrangements can be rearranged.

Kids can be amazing and they can also be maniacs and it’s OK to say that.

And, though my son may have a proclivity towards monkey business

he has excellent,

excellent

taste in records.

*My mother called me. “I have a favor to ask of you,” she said. “Please don’t call him a maniac. Please call him a spirited child.” So, friends, when you are reading this post in which I refer to my son as a “maniac” I do not, in fact, mean that he is a crazy, violent person. I mean that he is a very energetic, unstoppable force of nature in the body of a large toddler.

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