When I was pregnant Shawn and I used to lay in bed rubbing my belly and talking about what a future with Phoenix looked like. What he would look like. What his voice would sound like. What he would be like.

In the hospital that first night we kept exclaiming how zen he was.

hahahahahahaha

By the time he was a week old we knew he was going to be exactly like we had imagined when he was in utero ( I really love using that word). We knew in short he’d be a ball of energy, a constant fire of laughs, noise, and emotions.

In even shorter words, we knew he would be like me.

But then you move past the infant and toddler stages and you wonder what he’ll be like as a kindergartener, a middle schooler….a teenager.

Let me tell you. I know. He’ll be defiant. How do I know? Because of a little incident we had at 19 months old at the zoo.

We had gone to the DC zoo for some family time before Shawn went on his 3 week trip to LA and coincidentally this also happened to be a time that we had reached the end of our rope with Phoenix’s tantrums and mood swings. Full on discipline school was in session (at least part of the time)

So anyway when we arrived at the zoo we started the trip in the stroller . After about 20 minutes he was whining to get out. Before we let him out we explained that if he walked away from us or didn’t hold our hand he was going directly back to the stroller.

“Yes, Phoenix?”

“Yes Mommy”

So here we are walking through the zoo. He would be good for 15 minutes run off, go back in the stroller. We did this for a good portion of the day.

Now before I get to my main point (I know, I know) let me briefly say that Phoenix has always been pretty good about not putting small dangerous things in his mouth, like marbles or coins. Unless he’s mad at us….see where I’m going yet?

So in the zoo. We eat lunch and we give him the quarters from the change to play with (I am a good mother! He likes money! Gosh, like I would deprive my kid from joy!)  So when we leave lunch he acts like a crazy baby and doesn’t want to hold hands. So we plop him gently in the stroller.

We’re strolling along and he’s screaming at us and I’m sure he’s saying a lot of 4 letter words and cursing our very existence. And of course we are doing what all good parents do.

Ignoring him.

Until this lady stops us and says ‘You know he has money in his mouth’? In front of the lady my reaction was typical freaked out parent. Thanking her profusely for saving my baby’s life while stopping stroller mid stroll and rushing to Phoenix.

But see…I knew Phoenix. And things aren’t always as they seem.

What this lady didn’t see was when I reached Phoenix and looked at him with that mom look he smirked and spit the money out into my hand.

Like “Yeah bitch. Put me in the stroller again and I’ll shit pennies for days.”

Defiant.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 12th, 2010 at 9:36 am and is filed under About MotherHOOD, bad mommy, good mom, Toddlers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.