Happy Hour Breaks Out

Matteo wanted pancakes for breakfast. He always wants them from “scratch” but when we make up the batter, somehow 3 to 4 pancakes emerge. That means there are always leftovers to contend with. “I want different things in them.” he reminds me, “I want you to cook them.”

Surreptitiously, I slip a pancake disk from the refrigerator into the toaster. I change the subject to discussing what kind of “syriap” he wants on the pancake he’s requested. I used to put the maple syrup into an applesauce/yogurt mix, and heap it over the pile of cut-up pancake “squares.” I watched on several occasions while he studiously forked all the “sweet” into his mouth, leaving behind a sorry disarray of pancake brick-ettes.

So now the applesauce and yogurt is on the side, and the pancake foundation alone soaks up the syrup, and must be eaten to benefit the sweet tooth.

When I finally arrive at the breakfast table with my bowl of home made granola, he spots the peanut butter (some neutral observers have said that my granola preference is only a pretext for getting at the peanut butter) and cries out, “Happy Hour!”

What “happy hour” must mean to Teo has nothing to do with the bottles of beer he finds in the pantry and brings to me at any hour of the day when he’s feeling helpful. It has more to do with people eating out of the same container – dips, chips, carrot sticks, and so on. It’s a nice concept, that eating together off the same plate is “happy” making.

Anyway, he leaps down from his perch, locates his long-handled, baby spoon, and returns brandishing it. With the application of “please,” he receives a glug of peanut butter, which he snarfs. Spoon reappears. “What’s the word?” “Please Have Peanut Butter.”

If breakfast is our happy hour, swimming is our unhappy hour.

It’s all my doing. He is joyful tooling around on his noodle and his floatation backpack for ten minutes. As he gets bored, I come in for the “desensitization.” I want to be able to play with him, to be able to invade his perfectly ordered universe of toys clutched in hand, arms slung over noodle, with a little pulling him around (“motorboat”) or swimming with him on my back (“whale”) or showing him he’s got all it takes to stay afloat by holding him without the noodle, letting go, retrieving, letting go. Last winter he did all of this and more.

He lets me know this plan is unacceptable. We went through this “desensitization” Monday, and after the tears he was having a ball. This time I started with 30 minutes to go, rather than with 10. It was sort of an trial, attracting much negative attention.

Even Margie, the swimming maven, got involved. She told me to put a different, more buoyant, floaty-buttpack on him, but when I tried to stand him on the side to retrofit him, he got all “nonviolent” on me and went weepy limp.

Ordeal alert! All the other moms who were coasting their kiddies around, splashing them, jumping them in, catching them, and holding them, were turning away and marking their child-protective-services scorecards. Nancy and Molly-the-twin came over and checked in. I tried to boundary the mounting anxiety, stuck to my guns, and lost only a pint of blood.

Then at the library afterwards, he stood outside the front door and wandered, weeping like a public inebriate, because I wanted to save his banana for when he could actually eat it. He won the right to eat the banana in the car while I returned his books and got no new ones. The banana got eaten, and a bonus! – the shoes and socks got removed, by the time I returned.

So, barefoot to Value Village, which I often breeze through, pawing through the 4T (toddler) rack with Teo on one arm to minimize toy-clutch Weep-a-Ramas. Wednesdays VV gives 55-year-olds 20% or 10% or something off. The cash register girls never do a double take when I announce. My face-lines have finally won the battle.

We run the ten miles up to Fox to see if the spring water’s running after getting skunked last Saturday. Teo gets more animated, kicking his bare feet into the back of the driver’s seat for pure exuberance. The spigots are unfrozen, I fill up our four 5-gallon containers, and we head home.

Bonus Number Two: Mr. Happy Hour, a.k.a. Mr. Ordeal, falls asleep. When he’s safely in his warm little crib, I call up and tell my humiliation to Marin at work, and soon find myself in defensive mode. Awkward hang up, someone has work to do.

Ordeal Alert Number Two. Licking new wounds, I write her a helpful little letter which won’t make the blog. Marin, unexpectedly, writes back. A thoughtful reply. We fight better online than in person. That’s because Escalation, our main fighting flaw from our guerilla days of single-hood and dating and breaking up, is much more easily avoided online.

Face to face, later, the issue doesn’t come back up. Our own version of the invasion-proof, perfectly-ordered universe?

“Mama’s home again, Mama’s home again, Mama’s home again, Mama’s home again,” is currently Teo’s favorite made-up song. Another happy hour threatens to break out.