**Warning—this one’s not a funny one!**

John and Toby went to Pennsylvania for a youth fishing day with John’s college friends and their children. It was a fantastic trip and Toby had so much fun, but one moment made my heart hurt a bit.

They woke up early on Saturday and hit the river, fishing for a while. But when I talked to them mid-morning, Toby and John were back at John’s truck, with Toby very happy and drawing away in a notebook. John said Toby was fine, but just needed a little bit of a break, and after a bit they went right back to fishing with the group. Toby had a grand time, and told us he wanted to go live with Grant (probably because he got to drive a Bobcat).

But I knew just what that interlude back at the truck was—it was Toby’s introvert needing to put a pause on all the interaction. It’s something I recognize because I check ALL the boxes on those internet ‘are you an introvert?’ quizzes. After times of social interaction, I need a check-out period to ground myself. I don’t make friends easily at all, and as I get older it gets even harder for me.

I really hoped Toby had inherited John’s easy way with people, his gregarious ‘I’ll talk to anybody anytime,’ nature. But I see a lot of myself in Toby at times—a withdrawal in new settings or with new people, a hesitancy in reaching out. He worries a lot about who his friends are at school. It concerns me, because I know that many times life isn’t easy as an introvert. It’s lonely and stressful and a constant battle.

I want better for Toby. I want him to unquestioningly believe people like him, and to not worry all the time. I want him to have lots of friends. I want him to sail through life with confidence and be sure of himself.

I know I can’t change him—he’s wired the way he’s wired, and it looks like he’s wired a bit more like me than I would have hoped. But I hope I can give him some tools to help him navigate life with that wiring. He likes tools, so hopefully along with his hammer and wrench I can figure out how to equip him with self-knowledge and coping strategies. Wish me luck! (And if anyone has great advice on how to equip him, I’d love to hear it!)

The other night, Toby asked me a pretty simple question. Can he have a fabric placemat like the ones Captain and I use, instead of the cute, laminated one we got him from Bass Pro Shop probably more than a year ago.

“Sure!” I chirped and made the swap, washing the plastic camping scene one more time and storing it in a cupboard. The tug it made on my heart was inordinately large compared to the simple request. I couldn’t stop thinking, “I don’t know if I’m ready for him to use an adult placemat?!” Nooooooo.

To be fair, he’s by far a cleaner eater than Captain. And has been since about age 2. I really should just give Captain the Bass Pro laminated one.

But it’s yet another one of those little moments when the inevitable and inexorable march from baby to man becomes ever more evident. When these mini-humans are younger, there are those ever-so-important “milestones.” Smiling. Laughing. Crawling. Walking. The bucket list of infanthood. We wait expectantly for each one, rejoicing when our child resembles a blob a bit less and a human a bit more.

Then they hit the phase where they somewhat resemble a person. They walk. They talk in sentences. They run. They say no. A lot. There aren’t really any new ‘skills’ to attain. You know, other than sarcasm. I can’t wait til Toby masters that one. Given his genes, it’ll be soon.

The waypoints on the journey morph from milestones to milepebbles. You cruise through the days, with these munchkins every so gradually learning new words, to skip, how to slam the bedroom door. The road seems to level off, without the dramatic ups and downs and the huge, recognizable, photo-op ‘milestones.’

Now it’s the little tiny moments that every so often jump up out of nowhere and remind you of the progress being made. The correct usage of “actually” in a sentence. The night he puts a sensible amount of toothpaste on his toothbrush. The day he puts his own socks on, paying careful attention to where the heel goes. The time his face crumples when he tells you that none of his friends are going to come to his birthday “Because they don’t know where Lorne Rd. is.” And as I hug him and assure him I’ll make sure they know how to get here, I marvel that he has this social life so separate and that I’m going to have to add worrying about his little introverted self (oh, I can tell already) navigating it to my list.

The milepebbles are definitely more bittersweet than the milestones, somehow. They’re like glimpses of the future popping up when you least expect it. It’s so much fun to see who he’s becoming, but it makes me wistful to think of the parts of him he’s leaving behind. I’m keeping the Bass Pro placement. It’ll come in handy for Captain, at least.

My father literally snorted when we told him Toby was going to start playing soccer at the local YMCA.

“So, this makes you… a soccer mom???!!!!” he queried incredulously.

This is what happens when you spend your 20s gallivanting, surround yourself with animals and profess they’re your children, don’t get married until you’re 38 and then wait until 40 to create another human. Me becoming a mother boggled Dad’s mind. Me becoming a suburban stereotype? He just can’t imagine it.

But it’s OK, really, because I’m not really the “soccer mom” in this scenario. Sure, I signed the kid up and I’ll be in attendance at every practice and game I can. But I am much more laid back about this whole process than a certain male spouse in this household.

Did you know they make shin-guards for 3-year-olds? We bought shin-guards the size of my hand. And they were the MEDIUM size!!! Are there 2-year-olds out there signing up for soccer?

Toddler-size cleats, however, those they don’t stock at sporting goods stores in sizes small enough. Those, my friends, we had to order off Amazon. They’re on their way.

I would have been happy sending the munchkin to practice in tennis shoes and socks. I mean, really, I anticipate this first year of play to being focused mostly on not falling flat on his back while trying to kick the ball. Shin-guards I can maybe see, mostly from a “Why not be as preventative as possible” perspective. But cleats? We’re going to be lucky if these kids stay within the confines of the field and don’t beat feet down the road. Why give them more traction to terrorize?

After our trip to buy equipment to preserve my child’s fibulas and tibias, we dined (that word is an exaggeration if I ever heard one) at Buffalo Wild Wings, Toby’s FAVORITE. (YOU haven’t lived until you’ve heard ‘Buffawo Wiud Wins’ pronounced with the 3-year-old lisp.) A U.S. women’s soccer game was on the big screen, and Toby watched, positively entranced.

We didn’t talk too much about what was going on with the game, but the next night during dinner, he told us, “There are two goals in soccer.” It’s a start. Bring on the soccer!!!

Is this what rock bottom looks like? Hunched over in my driver’s seat parked at a 7-11, frantically portioning out 5 M&Ms onto squares of Saran Wrap I had hacked from the roll (Have you ever tried to cut Saran Wrap into even squares? Trust me, you’ll only do it once, from the depths of desperation.), twisting the wrap into a pouch then scotch-taping it to a tiny, cheap Paw Patrol valentine.

If it’s not rock bottom it’s the closest I’ve gotten so far.

We got a list of 26 kids’ names to provide valentines for the pre-school’s Valentine’s Day party. No worries! I purchased a cheap box of Paw Patrol insta-valentines (plus fake tattoos, because that’s how we roll—providing toddlers with the gateway to an ink addiction) WEEKS ago. I am on TOP of this game.

I even got Captain in on the act. While I was away for the day before V-Day, he coached Toby through signing each one. The night before V-Day, I packed up my assigned school party provisions donation (veggies. Toby swore no one would eat the celery, but damn it, celery was in the party platter of pre-cut veggies and as such it would for sure be included in my ‘why yes, I did carefully chop and slice all these veggies’ re-packaging effort into Tupperware.).

I wrote each child’s name on a valentine and tucked a fake tattoo into it. I even went so far as to put each room’s group into a separate ziploc bag with the class name on it.

BOOM, mother of the year. I was pretty proud of myself.

Then. Then I remembered that last year, I sent just valentines. And Toby came home with elaborate candy offerings from each of his classmates. I even remember the plaintive Facebook post I made about it.

Damn it. Was I going to make my kid THAT kid—the one who didn’t attach a lollipop to his valentine—two years in a row? My peer-pressure/mom-guilt addled brain decided at 11:30 p.m. that I. Would. Not.

And so began the process of conjuring up 26 individual servings of candy in the middle of the night. Yeah, we’re not the kind of family that keeps handfuls of individual serving candies around. In desperation, I decided to cannibalize the box of Valentine’s M&Ms that Toby’s grandmother had sent him. I did the math of serving size x servings per box and decided that 5 M&Ms per kid would suffice. (Hint, don’t believe the box’s M&M count.).

About 15 tiny hand-made Saran-Wrap baggies of 5 M&Ms each into the process (I experimented with sandwich bags. Do you know how pathetic a serving of 5 M&Ms looks in a sandwich bag?), I realized I wasn’t going to hit my quota. Not even if I bumped my serving down to 4 for all of the Bunny Rabbit class. I can now say that I’ve cursed the M&M gods.

And so, my friends, THIS is how I found myself buying an emergency bag of M&Ms at 7:30 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, then breaking a dewey sweat as I nestled 5 M&Ms each into their Saran Wrap purses in the 7-11 parking lot. I only had to fill 9 that morning, but with the tiny voice in the back seat questioning my sanity, it felt like an eternity of futility.

And yes, Toby came home with a box OVERFLOWING with valentines attached to lovely individual serving boxes of conversation hearts, Swedish fish, lollipops, and more. There was even a hand-lettered card with a Matchbox boat attached with a nice ribbon.

All this sent home in a highly crafted box festooned with decorations. Said box and decorations provided by a FAR more crafty mother who actually came INTO SCHOOL to supervise this crafting by 3-year-olds. Guess what, I wasn’t that mother.

I can only imagine the other parents pillaging the kids’ loot for a post-bedtime snack and coming across my 7-11-to-table, artisan crafted, mom-guilt sealed M&M Saran Wrap pouch with less than a handful of M&Ms inside. My sincere hope is that they had a sense of humor. Or, at the very least, a sense of pity.

I admit it, I belong to a few ‘community yard sale’ type Facebook pages. I’m working up the energy to take photos of some stuff to sell (because that’s a yuge effort).

But I’m also pretty entertained by what some people put out there.

This one takes concise copywriting to a whole new level…

“probably car shaped.” Dying of LOLs.

Not even quite sure what this is?

Now THIS is a mindset I could really get behind. I mean seriously, this ad really appealed to me. Not sure why the chef needs to be elderly, but the idea of having a grandmother-type cooking for me a few times a week? SOLD. Major points for creativity.

Ummmmm, there are these things called forecasts. And stores that sell shovels.

I really have no words for this one. I never saw pics go up. Small blessings.

I’m trying to imagine levels of nuclear my husband would reach if I started collecting salt and pepper shakers to this magnitude.

Punctuation is a beautiful thing, people. So are paragraphs.

Was Rosa Parks in jail? Yes. Why? Because she broke the rules. So she was bad? No, she was a very brave, very good person. Then why she break the rules and go to jail? …

Seriously, help me explain this.

They talked about Rosa Parks at Toby’s pre-school today. He got a little Scholastic hand-out about her and apparently an abbreviated explanation. He was FASCINATED about her getting arrested and going to jail.

He spent the entire trip home asking about it. Over and over, approaching it from every angle. He could NOT understand why if she “broke the rules” she was still considered a good person. I tried talking about how the rules then were wrong, so she was right to break them. Let’s just say that’s a level of subtle that is just a titch above a 3-year-old’s head.

“So, it’s OK to break the rules?”

“No, Toby, it’s not OK for YOU to break the rules.”

“But I think the rules are wrong. Lots of rules you say are wrong.”

Sigh. It’s too early to learn subversion. Look, Toby, a TRACTOR!

Supposedly tomorrow they’re moving on to ‘planets’ as subject matter. WHEW. His questions on this topic are a tad easier. “That guy lives on Earth too?” “Yep.” Happy. Bring on the planets.

Do you know what’s scarier than a 3-year-old in the middle of a raging tantrum?

The eerie, sudden, complete silence that ensued when we sent said irate tantrummer to his room for a time-out.

We’re used to echoing screams bouncing down the hallway. Kicks to the door, yep. Howls of outrage, totally normal. The outrage usually lasts for a few minutes, until he dials it down a bit and says the magic words, “I want to talk about it.” Then we go in have a chat about appropriate behavior, and carry on.

Not this time.

This time, after being sent to his room mid-dinner for whatever ridiculous breach of protocol he came up with this time, he screamed at full volume for 15 seconds, then went absolutely mute. Like, no sounds at all. John and I looked at each other, mildly alarmed. We waited, thinking maybe he was gathering oxygen for a fresh vocal assault.

Nope, silence.

The parental paranoia started running through my brain. Did he somehow pull his dresser on top of him? Fall and hit his head? “Go see what’s going on,” I told John. We were a bit freaked out.

“Are you OK? Toby, TALK TO ME.” John’s voice was edging toward panic. He carried Toby down the hall toward me. Toby’s little face was slack, his mouth hanging open. Completely unresponsive. We went into panic mode, frantically trying to think what might have happened. Do 3-year-olds have strokes???? We huddled over him, tantrum forgotten, desperate to have him respond and solve this puzzle of sudden reversal.

Then I saw Toby slant a sly side look toward John.

“We’ve been had. Big time,” I told John. Toby looked at me and I could almost swear he laughed. “Had, we’ve been. Badly.”

He plopped Toby back in his chair at the table, and instantly he was back to cute, happy, compliant Toby. Noshing on his dinner like nothing happened. So… yeah. Time-out aborted, consequences of the misbehavior vanished, attention lavished. Just. Like. That.

Well played, young’un. Well played.

I’ve discovered there are two ways to be treated like a massive celebrity in a restaurant. 1: Be a massive celebrity. 2: Be carrying a 3-year-old voicing the fact that his soul is burning with a thousand suns of indignation. Either way, fellow patrons will stare in disbelief, the wait staff will part like the sea before Moses, and the hostess will hold the door and facilitate your exit posthaste.

Then, you quickly switch roles to skeevy kidnapper, as the arriving people in the parking lot observe you trying to insert a raging tornado screaming “NOOOOO, take me back!!!!” into a car seat, which is a process much like stuffing a very angry cat into a carrying case, claws and all. You Just. Can’t. Control. All. The. Limbs. One will always escape and break the seal to evasion.

Toby’s new spirit animal is the Hellbender Salamander, discovered in an article about this horrifically ugly reptile in the latest Virginia Wildlife magazine.

It’s pretty apropos, as “hellbender” is pretty much how I’d describe Toby on far-too-often occasion in the last few weeks. The 3-year-old existential angst has hit like a ton of bricks in our household. I’d say that roughly 30 percent of the time, our kind, agreeable mini-human morphs into a snide, conniving, angry, resistant, fill in the uncooperative adjective here. It’s made me question every parenting decision and literally lose my mind on a few occasions. As much as I didn’t enjoy the infant “blob who just eats and poops” phase, this is worse. And then ads for books like “Managing Emotional Mayhem” pop up in my Facebook feed. Those Facebook people, they know.

But they all tell me it’s just another of those phases. And the whole “learning boundaries” thing is essential but not fun. So, I guess, when you’re going through Hellbender, just keep on going.

Toby goes to bed at 7:30ish each night, but he has a habit of calling out at about 9 p.m… “Mom. I have sometin to tell you.”

I go up to his room and sit on the edge of the bed, and he grabs my cheeks, pulls my head down to inches in front of his face, and whispers something COMPLETELY random. Example… “Mom, we haven’t used my stroller in a really long time.”

He’s the type that hears a fact and rolls it around silently in his head for days on end, then spits back out some question that’s obviously been stewing for quite some.

One of our cutest exchanges recently was this morning, when he asked me, “Mom, I was in your belly?” When I said yes he thought for a minute and then said, “But why did you eat me?”

My desperately thought of a reply and came up with “You were actually like a seed that grew in me.” Thankfully, he changed the subject and we carried on.

But it occurred to me today that I could very well face some interesting questions at 9 p.m. in the coming days. I’d be willing to bet I might hear something along the lines of: “If I was in your belly, how did I get out? Did you poop me out?”

I can’t wait.