By Christina Crawford of christinacrawfordnet.wordpress.com
Happy National Middle Child Day (August 12th) to all who celebrate!
Let’s just call a spade a spade. All three of my boys are maniacs, but my middle child really takes the cake. He is what you would call, ahem, spirited.
He has successfully pulled off one of the most impressive bait and switches in history. He was the easiest baby of all time and has turned into a full-blown lunatic. “Baby Jesus” and “The Christ Child” have been replaced by “Sneaky Joel” and “Messy Joel.” He has a penchant for shiny things and drawing on walls and furniture. Joel has systematically destroyed everything in our house. Some weapons of mass destruction in his arsenal include: baby powder, Desitin, toothpaste and of course, permanent sharpie maker. We routinely find him at the top shelf of the pantry stuffing his face with cookies.
He caused a code orange at Target. If you have not personally had the pleasure of experiencing this, allow me to explain…A code orange is when a child goes missing in Target and they lock down the entire store and call the police. Joel had run off and thought it would be funny to hide in a rack of clothes.
He and his baby brother were taking a bath together. I walked in and he was holding his brother under the water. He seemed genuinely confused why I was so horrified and explained to me that he was just “giving Jonah a swim lesson.”
Our goldfish has almost lost his life numerous times because Joel has dumped something in his bowl: Windex, anti-freeze, expensive face cream.
A plumber has been to our house not one, not two, but nine times in the last year. Joel loves to dump things in toilets and sinks.
My mom walked into a room today and remarked that it smells like a barnyard. It truly looks like an MMA fight took place in there.
I’m very scared of his teenage years to come. He’s already shown us the windows and secret exits he is going to sneak out of. We are already anticipating needing large sums of money to bail him out of jail so we have started saving accordingly. We have tried to implement love and logic with him, but as my husband says, “Love and Logic has never met Joel Crawford.”
I’m not just biased — the kid is gorgeous. He’s got this beautiful brown skin and eyelashes that women pay lots of money for. He is ultra charming and has a certain Chutzpah that money just can’t buy. The kid can talk his way in or out of any situation. He bats his mile-long eyelashes and flashes his devious grin and it’s impossible to say no to him.
His leadership skills are second to none. On numerous occasions he has been the ringleader and convinced his friends to join him in some elaborate scheme: turning their backyard into a mud pit, flooding the bathroom, and my personal favorite, “the garbage dump.” The garbage dump is when you take the contents of your entire house and dump it into a pile. I can only hope one day he will use these leadership skills for something productive vs leading a cult or prison riot. This kid is going places. Maybe not Harvard per se, but places.
There is a quote I love from the movie Meet Joe Black: “Everyone is allowed to have a favorite.”
Joel is mine.
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About the Author
Christina Crawford has three boys under 6 whose behavior more closely resembles feral animals than actual human children. The truth is, she spends the majority of her time just keeping these people alive and putting out fires (actual and metaphorical). But mostly, she’s just trying to mitigate the damage to her sanity. Her writing has been featured on Scary Mommy and the Ft. Worth Mom’s Blog. If you find her misery and misadventures in parenting amusing, you can follow along on her blog and Instagram: https://christinacrawfordnet.wordpress.com/ https://www.instagram.com/christinacrawford24