The Cry of the Baby Yeti.
You know how it is when it's the end of the day, you're ready to pick up your kid from daycare and get thee to your humble abode.
Well, you know how it is if you:
a) have at least one child and,
b) use day care.
If you have only one or none of those two things, then you probably don't know how it is. But you're smart, and you can use your imagination to pretend you know, right? Right.
Now that we've agreed that you either know how it is or you're capable of pretending to know how it is, walk with me through the rest of this story. The story that you're wondering if I'm going to actually get around to or not. And if I do ever get around to it, is it going to be worth the 120-180 seconds of your life that it took to read it? Only you can decide.
Okay, okay, so, the tale I'm still not exactly telling. I'll tell it now. With no exaggeration whatsoever.
As you may have surmised, it begins with me at the end of the work day, ready to pick up my kid from daycare and get myself to my humble abode.
I whipped into a parking spot and glided (yeah, like a movie star arriving at the red carpet) out of my fresh-to-death '05 Civic that may or may not need a good warshin' and a paint job.
Walking with poise, grace, and purpose, I strode across the parking lot, descended the stairs, punched in the top secret code, and let myself into the front doors.
Ah, the sounds of daycare. Parents greeting their wee ones at the end of a long day with choruses of, "Hi, honey! Did you have a good day today?" Laughter of children filtering from the classrooms into the hallway. Children crying. The sounds mingle together to create that beautiful cacophony (oxymoron?) unique to such an environment.
As I signed my precious angel out for the day at the cool, modern, touchscreen kiosk that only sometimes freezes, I heard the particularly loud wail of some very unhappy child. With a flick of my perfectly coiffed hair, I thought to myself, "Oh boy, someone is having a moment!"
Sign-out finally complete, I began to sashay down the hallway to my little snookum's classroom. The sounds of the crying child ringing loud and clear through the hallway, I thought, "Hmm... sounds a little like the cries of my darling little princess."
But with a few more steps I decided, "No, that's not my little flower." I pirouetted and leaped with joy in my heart, anticipating how my sweet, sweet girl would spy me at the door of her room, a smile spreading over her chubby-cheeked face, and drop her toys and rush towards me! Oh, what a reunion we shall have! She will be missing me so much!
However.
I took another one or two steps and I heard a familiar sound. Amidst the screams and wails, the sound of a trilling tongue that would put most Spanish speakers to shame was clearly heard. Whoever the screaming child was... sounded like a baby Yeti.
Oh, by the way, did I ever mention that my baby cries like a tiny Chewbacca?
My head held high, I resolved to approach her classroom collected and calm. Indeed, my little cherub was the child screaming her head off. Because no other baby cries like mine.
With apprehension, but firm resolve, I finally arrived at the door of her room. The door was open, with a baby gate separating the wild children of Room 4 from the civilized folks in the hallway. I scanned the room and finally found her tucked in a corner amongst the cubby holes that house baskets of toys. Sitting next to a teacher's helper, there she was: red-faced, tear stained cheeks, upper lip glistening with the puddle of snot that had been running from her nose.
Ahh, my darling. What could the matter be? I know her cries well enough to guess that this was a cry, not of pain, but of anger. Nevertheless, maybe she hurt herself. Maybe I'm misjudging. Maybe she needs her Mama!
My heart began to swell with concern and sympathy. "Sutton, baby? What's wrong?" I called out across the room.
I braced myself for the bad news. What pain has some other little monster inflicted upon my angel? What tales of woe will I soon hear? Oh, she will need her Mama's hugs to make it better! I'm sure of it!
The teacher's helper replied for her (as she was too busy with the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and also possessing a very insufficient language ability, to do so for herself): "She tried to bite someone and got in trouble."
.
.
.
.
Oh.
My little monster tried to inflict pain on some other little angel.
My perfectly made-up face fell. I didn't want to believe it. My baby? My darling? My Tooty Fruity Punkin Booty?
But, being the well-grounded and always sensible person I am, I was forced to accept that it was true. After all, was it not a week or two ago that I had to sign the Incident Report stating that, "Sutton tried to take her friend's toy. Her friend did not want to share, so Sutton bit her friend"? Was I not, at that very moment, sporting a bruise on my forearm where my sweet little nugget bit ME because she got mad when she bumped her head, and I happened to be sitting next to her?
It must be true. My child tried to use her teeth (her beautiful, adorable teeth) for something ugly. It breaks a mother's heart, but we mother's must not be blind to our children's less than desirable behaviors. (That is insensible, and NOT well-grounded. And it's very annoying to other parents.)
Thankfully, my little Chewbacca was not successful in her mission to express her frustration in such a way as leaves a temporary dental record embedded in the skin of another.
Though my heart was no longer swollen with sympathy and concern for my snotty-nosed darling, I still scooped up my girl, told her "we don't bite," and set her back down so we could walk, hand in hand, to the car.
Of course, when she tried to pull her hand out of mine and dash through the parking lot without me, and I had to grab her, she may have tried to bite me and slap me. Maybe. But she's my little Punkin Spice Latte of Love.
Yes, dear friends, in the matter of mere minutes, this whole parenting thing can take you on a journey. Where will the journey lead you? To bruises from bite marks? To kissing booboos? To pirouetting through daycare hallways? Your journey is your own.
And now you know my journey. From the highs of anticipation of hugs and smiles, to the lows of realizing my child is "the biter," it was a crazy 3-5 minutes.
But the story ended just how I wanted. We loaded into the car, and got ourselves to our humble abode.
Exaggerations about how you look and move but NOT about how your baby cries... to you and yours,
xo
UPDATE: Roughly 15 seconds after posting this, I got a call from one of Sutton's teachers. She just bit someone. Thought you'd like to know. My journey is looking more and more like being shunned by other parents until my child grows out of this. xo
Well, you know how it is if you:
a) have at least one child and,
b) use day care.
If you have only one or none of those two things, then you probably don't know how it is. But you're smart, and you can use your imagination to pretend you know, right? Right.
Now that we've agreed that you either know how it is or you're capable of pretending to know how it is, walk with me through the rest of this story. The story that you're wondering if I'm going to actually get around to or not. And if I do ever get around to it, is it going to be worth the 120-180 seconds of your life that it took to read it? Only you can decide.
Okay, okay, so, the tale I'm still not exactly telling. I'll tell it now. With no exaggeration whatsoever.
As you may have surmised, it begins with me at the end of the work day, ready to pick up my kid from daycare and get myself to my humble abode.
I whipped into a parking spot and glided (yeah, like a movie star arriving at the red carpet) out of my fresh-to-death '05 Civic that may or may not need a good warshin' and a paint job.
Walking with poise, grace, and purpose, I strode across the parking lot, descended the stairs, punched in the top secret code, and let myself into the front doors.
Ah, the sounds of daycare. Parents greeting their wee ones at the end of a long day with choruses of, "Hi, honey! Did you have a good day today?" Laughter of children filtering from the classrooms into the hallway. Children crying. The sounds mingle together to create that beautiful cacophony (oxymoron?) unique to such an environment.
As I signed my precious angel out for the day at the cool, modern, touchscreen kiosk that only sometimes freezes, I heard the particularly loud wail of some very unhappy child. With a flick of my perfectly coiffed hair, I thought to myself, "Oh boy, someone is having a moment!"
Sign-out finally complete, I began to sashay down the hallway to my little snookum's classroom. The sounds of the crying child ringing loud and clear through the hallway, I thought, "Hmm... sounds a little like the cries of my darling little princess."
But with a few more steps I decided, "No, that's not my little flower." I pirouetted and leaped with joy in my heart, anticipating how my sweet, sweet girl would spy me at the door of her room, a smile spreading over her chubby-cheeked face, and drop her toys and rush towards me! Oh, what a reunion we shall have! She will be missing me so much!
However.
I took another one or two steps and I heard a familiar sound. Amidst the screams and wails, the sound of a trilling tongue that would put most Spanish speakers to shame was clearly heard. Whoever the screaming child was... sounded like a baby Yeti.
Oh, by the way, did I ever mention that my baby cries like a tiny Chewbacca?
My head held high, I resolved to approach her classroom collected and calm. Indeed, my little cherub was the child screaming her head off. Because no other baby cries like mine.
With apprehension, but firm resolve, I finally arrived at the door of her room. The door was open, with a baby gate separating the wild children of Room 4 from the civilized folks in the hallway. I scanned the room and finally found her tucked in a corner amongst the cubby holes that house baskets of toys. Sitting next to a teacher's helper, there she was: red-faced, tear stained cheeks, upper lip glistening with the puddle of snot that had been running from her nose.
Ahh, my darling. What could the matter be? I know her cries well enough to guess that this was a cry, not of pain, but of anger. Nevertheless, maybe she hurt herself. Maybe I'm misjudging. Maybe she needs her Mama!
My heart began to swell with concern and sympathy. "Sutton, baby? What's wrong?" I called out across the room.
I braced myself for the bad news. What pain has some other little monster inflicted upon my angel? What tales of woe will I soon hear? Oh, she will need her Mama's hugs to make it better! I'm sure of it!
The teacher's helper replied for her (as she was too busy with the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and also possessing a very insufficient language ability, to do so for herself): "She tried to bite someone and got in trouble."
.
.
.
.
Oh.
My little monster tried to inflict pain on some other little angel.
My perfectly made-up face fell. I didn't want to believe it. My baby? My darling? My Tooty Fruity Punkin Booty?
But, being the well-grounded and always sensible person I am, I was forced to accept that it was true. After all, was it not a week or two ago that I had to sign the Incident Report stating that, "Sutton tried to take her friend's toy. Her friend did not want to share, so Sutton bit her friend"? Was I not, at that very moment, sporting a bruise on my forearm where my sweet little nugget bit ME because she got mad when she bumped her head, and I happened to be sitting next to her?
It must be true. My child tried to use her teeth (her beautiful, adorable teeth) for something ugly. It breaks a mother's heart, but we mother's must not be blind to our children's less than desirable behaviors. (That is insensible, and NOT well-grounded. And it's very annoying to other parents.)
Thankfully, my little Chewbacca was not successful in her mission to express her frustration in such a way as leaves a temporary dental record embedded in the skin of another.
Though my heart was no longer swollen with sympathy and concern for my snotty-nosed darling, I still scooped up my girl, told her "we don't bite," and set her back down so we could walk, hand in hand, to the car.
Of course, when she tried to pull her hand out of mine and dash through the parking lot without me, and I had to grab her, she may have tried to bite me and slap me. Maybe. But she's my little Punkin Spice Latte of Love.
Yes, dear friends, in the matter of mere minutes, this whole parenting thing can take you on a journey. Where will the journey lead you? To bruises from bite marks? To kissing booboos? To pirouetting through daycare hallways? Your journey is your own.
And now you know my journey. From the highs of anticipation of hugs and smiles, to the lows of realizing my child is "the biter," it was a crazy 3-5 minutes.
But the story ended just how I wanted. We loaded into the car, and got ourselves to our humble abode.
Exaggerations about how you look and move but NOT about how your baby cries... to you and yours,
xo
UPDATE: Roughly 15 seconds after posting this, I got a call from one of Sutton's teachers. She just bit someone. Thought you'd like to know. My journey is looking more and more like being shunned by other parents until my child grows out of this. xo
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