Toddlers are dangerous. They are quick and accurate. Their rage is without reason. They are sneaky too, kicking, hitting, pinching and biting when you’re not looking.
Angus - wouldn't hurt a fly
Most times they assault you, they laugh. I think they like it. Someone should start up a support group for parents who get beat up by their babies.
I’ve never been hurt so much as I have in the past two years. That stretch of time coincides with the birth of Angus.
Angus is only two but he headbutts like Evander Holyfield. In the morning, he gets in bed with us. He likes to get close. We have clashed heads many times, his forehead finding my nose or eye socket. It has happened too many times to be an accident.
I cover my head with the pillow and place my hand strategically, to prevent the butts. He’s too clever, getting through my defence.
Not long ago, about five in the morning, with my reflexes ruined by tiredness, Angus led with the head, a hammer collision right between my eyes.
He lay still a while then sat up, patting my head. ‘Bang,’ he said.
‘Bang,’ I said, wiping weeping eyes.
He rubbed the back of his head and looked at Kristine. ‘Bang,’ he said, patting his head.
I feel silly, because he has been butting me for months. But as Mills Lane famously described Holyfield’s butt that so enraged Mike Tyson, it was an unintentional butt.
Tyson knew he was going to be butted. Whenever Angus gets on the bed with us in the morning, I know I am a chance to be butted, because he loves getting his head under the pillow, next to mine.
He’s just a little bit unintentional, like Holyfield.
A few months ago he butted Kristine so hard I heard the thwack from the kitchen. Angus ended up in tears. Kristine was holding her face, eyes closed.
‘That sounded like it hurt,’ I said.
Kristine opened her eyes and sighed.
I picked Angus up. ‘That’s a point off,’ I said, saying the words dozens of referees should’ve said to Holyfield. ‘Watch your head.’
There is more to a toddler than foreheads. Before Angus could walk, he found his feet. It was cute. When he learned to walk, he found our feet, quickly learning how to grind his heel into our toes.
He did this when we were sitting or standing. He was fond of the sink, when we were handling knives and other dangerous utensils or hot pots of rice.
One morning, I put my feet on the dining table frame. He held onto the table, lifted his right leg and squashed my foot into the frame. He was too clever for me. I couldn’t stop the laughter.
Don’t step on my feet became a mantra. I ended up standing on one foot and ready to alternate my anchor whenever he was nearby.
Like most kids, Angus bit and pinched us whenever he felt we weren’t meeting his expectations. He never bit my nipple, but he certainly showed Kristine he had teeth.
Play time is exciting time. I’d often hear Kristine and Angus laughing, then a howl and a cry.
Don’t bite mummy were the obvious words.
When kids are around, stuff like toys, keys and remote controls end up beneath furniture. Parents are often flat out on the floor, trying to reach something and cursing the dust.
I was face down on the floor, trying to reach a car Angus rolled under the television cabinet. He was standing above me, holding a golf ball. My fingertips found the car as the golf ball found my cheek bone and ricocheted into the wall.
It’s my own fault. I took too long to get the car, and I’ve been teaching Angus how to throw. Golf balls are banned from the house now. If he wants to throw them at us, he has to do it outside.
During quiet time, he’ll be sitting on my lap, watching TV or reading a book. He likes pulling my arm hair or squeezing my fingers. And he has no concept of the soft parts of our bodies. We get knees into groins, elbows into necks and fingers in our bellybuttons.
It has to be deliberate. Like the day I told him he couldn’t have Kristine’s water bottle but he could have his. He didn’t like that, so he bounced Kristine’s water bottle off my ankle.
Cop that…
I used blade three to clipper my hair so his fingers wouldn’t magically get stuck in the strands. Kristine has had short hair for years.
But there is more than outright assault. Kids hurt our backs, strain elbow tendons and booby trap the house, leaving toys everywhere to be tripped over or stood on at three in the morning.
There are structural problems too. A woman I know is waiting for surgery on a hernia she developed from picking up her kids. Many parents I know now have disc problems or wrist problems.
I am sure picking Angus up contributed to the meniscus tear in my knee. I was running regularly at the time, but the first time I noticed the pain, I was picking him up. Carrying him in the baby Bjorn sent pain from my knee into my belly.
If I did to Kristine what Angus has done, I’d be charged with domestic violence. But kids get away with it all, kicking, biting, scratching, slapping faces and screaming, throwing things and breaking things.
‘He is just experimenting,’ my grandmother Mary once famously said. She was the calmest women I have known, no matter how many grandkids she was looking after.
When Angus pierces our eardrums during the drive home because his soft drink can is dinted, I long for the kind of calm Mary had.
Things have gone missing at home too. Kristine’s rings and watch have been missing for months. Angus is the suspect. Ask him and he remains impassive, pretending he doesn’t know.
When Kristine and I looked for them, I offered simple advice.
‘We need to think like a two-year old,’ I said.
‘That should be easy for you,’ Kristine said.
I tried hard. We couldn’t find them. They might never be found.
Anyone in for a support group???
