It's All An Act

You know how when a serial killer is caught, all the neighbors say, "He was so quiet. He kept to himself." Or "He seemed so normal." Well . . . Demon Baby has his own version of that.

From the moment this child's eyes open, until he crashes in exhaustion at bedtime (he hasn't napped in a year!), he makes a LOT of noise. He talks, he chatters, he sings Rage Against the Machine (see a couple of posts ago). He smashes things, he plays the drums, he screams, he bangs pots. If it makes noise in some way, he's all for it.

But at preschool? And church? He never says ONE word. He can, quite literally, go an entire week without speaking. Not ONE word.

And so when I tell people about Demon Baby, when I regale them with my syrup-covered walls and my marker-covered carpets, with the time he PAINTED the bird with watercolors and the time he put CHEESE in the fishtank--LARGE chunks of cheese! And the time he stripped naked and covered himself in ice cream and sprinkles, and the time he threw roll afer roll of toilet paper over the second-floor landing to the first, effectively toilet papering my house, and the time he put all the family toothbrushes in the toilet, and the time, this week, when he was allowed to play in the sink with some plastic cups and splash, but he was left alone for a "moment" when the phone rang, and he stripped naked and covered himself in a generous layer of liquid dishwashing soap, effectively rendering himself as slippery as a fresh-caught bass . . . no one believes me.

"But he SEEMS SO QUIET. So SHY. So SWEET."

It is part of his nefarious plot to fool them all so when I finally have my nervous breakdown, no one will understand.

My own baby is gaslighting me.