Pick-it-up-now-pick-it-up-now!

Motherhood. Ahhhh....motherhood. Its blessings outweigh its headaches. Thank God. Because those headaches can be pretty mean. Don't get me wrong. I love those little tiny people. They're my sweet angels, my sugar babies. They make me laugh and love like I never knew possible. So please, keep that in mind when I say that they also push me to the brink of insanity regularly.

They're little terrorists. Point blank. They are trying to strategically drive me crazy using varying stages of torturous methods. Stage One: They destroy the house. Destroy. It's their mission from moment to moment and day to day. So don't try to pick up, Mom. "NO! Not my...[random fragment of a toy that I don't even recognize]!" Haha! I have been sneaking UFTs (Unidentified Fragmented Toys) into the trash for over a year now. Casually and cheerfully, I'm picking up the clutter and, right under their noses, I am picking off toys. One junkie piece at a time. McDonald's toy football men, tiny accessories for tiny plastic kingdoms and tiny spare hardware for tiny hero headquarters. Picked off. Gone forever. But it's just a drop out of the bucket...out of the ocean of toys and further UFTs.

Emma is forewoman of the destruction phase. It's as if she sees a state of disarray as her personal duty. When she walks into an orderly living room, she calmly but purposefully begins systematically breaking it down. First on her list of obvious problems is the couch arm covers, fling, the chair arm covers, fling! The couch cushions require hardly more effort--KNOCK those off in the floor where they belong. Oh, the books. What are they doing on the bookshelf? They go in the floor. Dusting off her hands, she scans the room for other eyesores. Seeing none, she makes her way to the snack bowl. She has a few Cheese-Its, and if one should fall in the floor, all the better for Em-Lynny-Lou. When they're all gone, she just dumps the crumbs right on the coffee table...for good measure. Time for a drink. Ahhhhh, refreshing. Fling! Ker plunk--sippy cup nose-dive into the carpet. Score! And it's standing upside down! Bonus!

She is practically begging me to have a nervous breakdown. I teeter on the edge now and then, but I have thought my strategy through a few times in my brief moments of clarity, and I think this kind of extreme recklessness calls for an extreme and perhaps radical approach. I try to catch her in the act and then I immediately sound off: PICKITUPNOW. PICKITUPNOW. PICKITUPNOW. It usually works. She is startled into action. My theory is that this alarm-like response will trigger a negative association with this destructiveness that she loves. When she is feeling extra stubborn, I stay fiercely committed to the auto-repeat strategy in my most serious and forceful tone. I combine this with a severe and dramatic pointing gesture. PICKITUPNOW, PICKITUPNOW, PICKITUPNOW! EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. And though she is a very determined little girl, she frequently gives up halfway through the task, testing my level of commitment. In order to get her to actually re-construct, I must repeat, repeat, repeat, never faltering even for a moment or she will sense my weakness and move right on from her consequence.

When this happens, it seems as if it may be too late.... It's over. We lost? Wreck it Ralph would be so proud. Auto-repeat couldn't penetrate the steel wall that is Emma's will.

Auto-repeat can actually be counter-productive because using it can weaken your senses, cause fatigue, and possibly even cause you to auto-pilot yourself right into delirium.... This is Stage 2. Your grip on reality begins to slip through your automated mind. I have caught myself repetitively and blindly participating in a three-line Q and A session with Ethan, answering the exact same question 100 times on auto-pilot, or saying, "You did?? That's awesome!" over and over to the same thing, or pretending to argue the same hard fact over and over, purely for his entertainment and unending joy. Ethan is foreman of Stage 2, mental fatigue.

I find myself caught in a mental loop, and I fall into the "Pete and Re-Pete" trap. You remember how it goes, right?

"Pete and Re-Pete were sittin' on a fence. Pete fell off. Who was left? 
'Re-Pete.' 
Pete and Re-Pete were sittin' on a fence. Pete fell off...." etc.

That's exactly how I feel sometimes. I'm livin' in a Pete and Re-Pete world. Yes, my experience of motherhood sometimes causes...brief breaks from reality...moments when I think...this is not normal. I mean--I have obviously fallen way off the fence, Pete.

But, when I return from insanity and realize she still isn't pickingitupnow... I have even resorted to physically making her pickitupnow. I refuse to just throw my hands up when my child has just pulled all of the clothes out of the dresser and then said, "No," after I've clearly told her to put them back. I calmly walk over to her, explaining all the while that, yes, she will in fact pickitupnow. I stand directly behind her like a shadow and take actual physical control of her body. Her hand cupped in my hand, I bend her at the waist. Like a puppeteer, I direct her body to submit to my will, clasping her hand with my hand onto the object, and by gosh, we pickitupnow. One way or another, she WILL pickitupnow, pickitupnow--pickitUP, pickitUP, pickitUPnow. [Insert break from reality and The Red Hot Chili Peppers] Eventually, my hope is that this will become a learned sequence of events. You might even say "automatic." Destroy--AndPickitupnow. Good luck with that, huh? Thanks.

I'm sure some of you may think this form of "physical possession" is harsh. I personally think that different learning styles call for different approaches. She's just a hands-on learner. I can be hands-on.... She needs muscle memory. I can help her with that. I will go with her through the "pickitupnow" motions just as I directed her hands to reach out for her rattle when she was a newborn baby, when I steadied her first balance as she stood, held her hands and walked alongside when she learned to walk.... You see? Just as I directed her first crayola marks and guided her first tricycle ride, I feel called to guide her in the righting of her wrongs. PICKITUPNOW.

Her preference for disarray is admittedly something she came to very naturally. I have always been the queen of clutter. Things are here and there and everywhere, and I know each and every where.

However, although we both have a tendency toward chaos and clutter, we both will have to succumb to the hard, cold fact that in life when we pitch a fit, fling that thing, or dump that whole bowl of crumbs...the universe will insist that we PICKITUPNOW.