i don’t know what I’m doing

Children come into this world stamped with their own distinct trademark moves: looks they make when they’re pooping, ear-piercing screams they howl when nothing in particular is wrong (meant only, I think, to invite unwanted parenting advice from old biddies at the grocery store), and, one of my all-time favorites: sleeping with their middle fingers cocked just so when they are teeny tiny newborns (choice photo captions abound).

When Lucy, my darling daughter of three, is doing something that makes me want to call CPS on myself she shouts, “I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!” It’s not a phrase that’s meant to deter me. It’s not an angel-voiced “Nothing Mother! I’m not doing anything in here!” It’s a loud, demanding, “I’M ONLY THREE AND I HAVE POOR IMPULSE CONTROL! I NEED YOU TO PULL ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE! PLUS I WANT YOU TO SEE WHAT I’M DESTROYING IT’S FREAKING AWESOME!”

A short list of things that Lucy has done when she hasn’t known what she’s been doing:

1. Painted the hair of her Princess Tiana doll pink, slathered her face in makeup, filed her (plastic) fingernails down to nubs with an emery board and then tried to cut off her hands with a cuticle nipper. (Do you have a cuticle nipper? They’re like mini gardening shears. To poor Princess Tiana they were like a freaking hand guillotine). When I walked in on her in the bathroom and found the magnetic lock to the drawer that held all these magical gadgets broken, she assured me that Princess Tiana was itchy so she was just trying to make her more comfortable by filing and cutting off her hands. I felt much better.

2. Pushed her changing table into the middle of her room (which is on wheels but still enormously heavy. I sense that we may have a Spiderman situation on our hands.), threw its contents onto the floor, and was using a golf club to paddle her way through pirate-infested waters.

Lucy: “I don’t know what I’m doing!”

Me: “You’re rowing to Cuba. Bring me back a mojito. Quiet time is over in thirty minutes.”

3. Before she reached Cuba she pulled over to have an accident in her panties. She took off said panties and decided that the poop (lots of people piss and moan when mommy bloggers talk about poop so let’s just call it hot dogs) would be better in the ocean. All. Over. The. Ocean. (Where I say “ocean” please insert “white area rug.”) So Lucy decided that the hot dogs needed to be smeared and smashed and stomped on all over the white area rug.

Lucy: “I don’t know what I’m doing!”

Me: “Me neither. Where’s my goddamn mojito?”*

4. Lucy has one of those twisty-door-handle-cover-thingies on the inside of her room that’s supposed to keep her in her room during quiet time so she doesn’t do things like try to behead Princess Tiana. But somehow, tiny Houdini that she is, she managed to press the button lock on the door handle while the cover was on, probably while she was trying to break out of her room and go kill Princess Tiana once and for all. She was locked in her room. I slipped a heavy metal salad spoon under the door and told her to smash the twisty-door-handle-cover-thingie until it fell off. With one scream and an “I don’t know what I’m doing!” she broke the cover off and was free. If she ever finds herself in prison I have a feeling it won’t be for long.