Maglight

The babies are just starting to sleep most of the night through, and I'm beginning to not feel completely sleep deprived.  I have changing diapers, preparing bottles down pat.  Most of the time I'm able to comfort the babies and help them get to sleep.

Overall, I was actually feeling as though I have a handle on the situation, and it has taken me 5 months and 10 days to get to this point.

On the way to Long Beach to have lunch with friends I had a few moments in which I was not in a state of anxiety about my parenting skills. 

Basking in the glow of not feeling as though I wanted to throw up blood for the first time in six months, I honestly wasn't listening to what Gioconda was saying until I heard

"...and then we will have to find a place to store the furniture..."

What?  

Apparently it is time to start baby proofing the house.  My moment of peace shattered with the image of one of my babies pulling a crystal candle stick holder onto their heads.

At lunch I tried to drown my preoccupation with lamps being pulled off tables leaving disfiguring scars on the faces of my daughters with a nice cold sangria, yet I couldn't shake the visual of a shelf full of glass being pulled down with a toddler under it.

Our friend Denise has a three year old.

"Its been a rough week," she said during lunch.

"Rough in what way," I asked.

"Roxy threw a flash light at me when I told her to take a nap," she said.

"What kind of flash light, a Maglight or a plastic Coleman?" I asked.

"Maglight," she replied.

Not a Maglight, I thought.  

Of Gioconda's four sons two are Maglight throwers.  

Last summer I watched a metal chair fly by my office window through the yard as a result of Julien's frustration of putting together a basketball hoop. A few months back Dylan threw the remote to his television against the wall of his room denting the wall and destroying the unit, I remain unclear about the provocation.  Granted it doesn't happen all that often but when those boys loose their shit- they really loose it.

Two out of four are Maglight throwers.  Yet to date I have never had a Maglight thrown at me.

Gioconda tells me that you can tell how your child will be as a teenager at the age of three.

"Three year olds are not fit to be in public," she says.  

I was just getting my head around removing anything that the girls could pull over, fall under and get wedged in between, and then I am hit with the possibility of  one of the girls heaving something heavy at me with a simple request of a refreshing nap.

"Maybe it wasn't personal," I told Denise.  "Maybe it was she just got upset and threw the Maglight, but not really AT you."

"Maybe," Denise replied, but then added "But she also told me my hair was ugly."

Ok, I am so not ready for this...