Everything You Ever Wanted by Jillian Lauren

Author:Jillian Lauren
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2015-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

~ Chapter 16

TARIKU is eighteen months old when he goes immediately from crawling to sprinting. I get stir-crazy enough to forget the yoga debacle and try Gymboree, Music Together, and Mommy and Me Swimming. I have no idea whether T is ready. Maybe he’s challenging because he needs more interesting activities than reading Mr. Brown Can Moo and pouring sippy cups full of milk into the Blu-ray player. On the other hand, maybe he’s still transitioning and should stay in the house for another three months until he feels safe. But how am I supposed to know if either of these is true? I am so restless myself that I decide to go with the former.

I stride into the classes as if I know what I’m doing. It’s a strange thing, to have a one-and-a-half-year-old and have only six months of mothering under my belt. Most of the women walking around with kids this size have a crucial year on me. I am always self-consciously scrambling to catch up. In each class, when I begin to notice that T is markedly different from the other kids his age, I wonder if it’s just the result of my lack of experience.

At first, he is just the loudest and most active kid and I take it as a point of secret pride, wondering why all those other kids are such duds. After about a month, he goes from being the kid who inspires laughter that then turns a bit nervous, to the kid the other parents actually scramble to avoid sitting next to because he has no sense of personal space. I stop bothering to smile at the other parents because they avoid eye contact. He knocks kids down in a way that lands somewhere between accidental and intentional. Every room we’re in, whether in the coffee shop or the indoor playground, he turns on a dime and makes a daring escape attempt, hurtling toward the door. I have to drop everything where I stand and dash out after him. He makes a break for it again and again, undeterred by how many times I bring him back, squirming like a greased pig and usually hollering to boot. At first I’m painfully embarrassed, but eventually my embarrassment dissolves and is replaced by foreboding. What does this behavior mean? Will it just take a little time for him to feel safe, for his neurons to start firing correctly? Or are we looking at a lifetime of struggle?

What the hell is going on with my kid?

With his six brand-new teeth, Tariku begins to bite me. He bites Scott as well, but not with nearly the same frequency and fervor. At first it is tentative and only occasional. Soon his bites break the skin, when I can’t dodge them. One night he latches on to the thin skin over my collarbone and tears a hole in it. I have to grab his hair to get him to let go. I have pulled my child’s hair. He glares at me with accusation and bawls.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.