Bitty and the Boy

The Boy
April 11, 2008 2:24am
4 years, 11 months

"Can I tell you about it when we get back in there (his room)"

"It was when I was at school. And you had some bad stuff in your mouth. And you were gonna die. And there was pirate stuff all around 'cause we were pretending to be pirates. And Cindy tried to get you to spit the bad stuff out. And it was paper."

"I know. It was just a bad dream."

My only question is....who is Cindy?

Since the day we brought Bitty home from the hospital, The Boy has agitated him. It was common-place to hear someone say, "The Boy better watch out when Bitty gets bigger. He's going to haul off and smack him." Little by little Bitty has asserted himself.

Battle 1: March 2008

Bitty vs. The Boy

The Boy loves to dress up and pretend. On this day, he was Spiderman. He finds it amusing to have Bitty be a villain -- the Green Goblin that day. I will add here that Bitty doesn't really comprehend the pretending or the fact that there is a reason The Boy is jumping around screaming at him.

SpiderBoy found that he could make the Bitty Goblin holler if he ran up and yelled at him. Aunt Mae (aka Mommy) was in the kitchen cooking dinner. The Boy came into the kitchen crying loudly, "Bitty hit me with his hand." I looked at my precious Bitty hovering behind The Boy and said, "No hit." Then calmly explained to The Boy that scaring his brother like that was going to result in violence. "He will hit you if you do that to him," I said. Ten minutes later. The Boy is back crying even louder. "Bitty hit me with his (stuffed) monkey," The Boy cried. The somewhat amused Mommy looked at the boys and said, "Bitty, no hit." and "He will hit you with whatever he has in his hand if you do that to him again. This is your choice. Don't scare him and he will not hit you." Ten minutes later. The Boy is shrieking and holding his head as he wanders into the kitchen. "Mommy. Bitty hit me in the he- ad." (I love the way children say head with two syllables) I look up prepared to repeat the warnings to my children. What do I see? I see my ever so sweet 22month old coming around the corner with a baseball bat (albeit a plastic one). As I check The Boy's head for damage, I explain that this is just the thing that I warned him about earlier. There were no more incidents that night. The Boy had learned his lesson for the evening at least.


Winner: Bitty

The War Continues....

In his almost 5 year old innocence, he was pretending -- it seems he pretends more than he doesn't. This morning he pretended that he was fat. Why? I don't know. While he was walking around pretending to be fat, he came up to me and said, "Not that it matters, but you are a little fat, aren't you? I love you anyway, but you ARE a LITTLE fat, right? I still love you. But you ARE fat, right?" I just started to cry. I couldn't help myself. There was no reasoning with my heart. I couldn't say no -- because I am overweight. I was just so sad for his innocence lost. It startled me. Not three months ago, he looked at me and said, "Mommy, you are not fat. You are beautiful." This happened as we were having a conversation about a little girl at school who is heavier. He called her fat as a descriptor for me to know which little girl she was. He said it as truthfully as when he said she had brown hair and was "really nice." I told him that it hurts people's feelings when they are called things like fat. I told him of the times that I was called fat when I was a little girl and how it had hurt my feelings. How did things change so quickly?