One of those longer posts I keep promising you is about how much more fun I am having with a peri-toddler than I was a year ago with a tiny baby. SO much more fun! The Bean is more independent now, of course, but he’s also a better companion in general: he feeds me his peas, he brings gifts to the cats, and he’s starting to learn to sing songs with me. (For real, that last one kills me. He is getting pretty good at doing the echo parts in “Sing What I Sing.” Now I just have to start the verse and he grins and sings, “ah, ah, ah.”) I still have my moments, of course. He gets frustrated by something and starts yelling about it, and pretty soon I am right there with him, saying, “I don’t know what it is you want me to do!” or something similarly maternal and supportive.

The three amigos who are his current favorite stuffed animals — Lambie, Tattoo Bear, and Elmo — are a prime source of frustration. It used to be enough that they were in his crib for sleeping, but now they have to get out of the crib when he does, too. When I come to get him up from a nap, he solemnly hands them out, one by one, before raising his arms to get lifted out himself. (Please, God, let me have a few more months before he figures out how to get himself out. Please.) Sometimes he is content to play with them in his room, but more often he decides they need to travel the house with him, a difficult proposition, given that together they are bigger than he is. He scoops them all up anyway — no one said triplets were easy, y’all — and then discovers he can’t crawl that way. He refuses to walk with them (dangerous!), so he kind of staggers around on his knees, usually while griping. Griping about how hard it is to take care of small beings. Wonder where he got that from.

Do they even make an ergo for this?

Back in his room, where they usually end up after a brisk drag through the cat food, the guys almost always want to be thrown back into the crib, and the Bean obliges. Then, of course, they want out again, so the Bean commences pulling them through the bars by whatever limb he can reach. Tattoo Bear fits. Lambie might, if conditions were perfect. Elmo, though, has a big, hard head. Definitely a c-section candidate, that one.

The Bean and Elmo, in simpler times.

Elmo and the Bean have been all but inseparable for nearly a year now, long enough that I am almost over wondering how a child who had at that point never seen an Elmo video could fall so totally in love with my least-favorite muppet, so his being trapped causes a major emotional collapse for the Bean. Def Con one; full klaxoning, in effect. (tip of the nib to Mrs. Hairy for that verb, now firmly ensconced in the household lexicon.).

Usually, we come and help at this point. The apartment is small, after all, and we like having our hearing intact, although we are starting to see the appeal of losing select bits of it. But this morning, Sugar wasn’t helping fast enough, I guess. The Bean pulled and pulled and yelled and yelled. Finally, he turned to her, up to his ears in vexation, and said to her, loudly and clear as a bell,

“I DON’T KNOW!!!”

Possibly it is time I cleaned up certain other aspects of my vocabulary of annoyance. Ahem.