Eli, My Life Coach

It's Eli's birthday today. Oh wait, it's not. His birthday was actually yesterday, but we couldn't seem to find even a five minute increment in the day when the whole family would be home at once to celebrate his birthday. So we adopted a "don't ask, don't tell" policy and it worked out well. He never even thought to ask if it was his birthday. Thank goodness 4 year-olds don't really have a sense of time yet, but we'll need some luck pulling that one off again next year.

So, on this happy occasion of it almost being Eli's birthday, but not, I am posting the last of my "cheater blog posts": little articles I wrote when I was writing a humor column for 3 months and then found myself without a magazine to write for anymore. After this, I might have to actually be creative again, yikes! It's all about Eli, written several months ago when he was going through a phase that I had to make funny or it would make me insane! So, Happy Birthday Eli and thanks for growing out of this particular phase of your life. Four is already a happier, gentler age (for now.)

Eli, My Life Coach

**********

I have acquired a life coach. I know, I know, it’s so Hollywood of me. I have to admit I’m a little put off by his age; he’s so young to be such an authority on my life. But he seems so dedicated to pointing out all my faulty paradigms, he’s hard to ignore. My life coach is my 3 year-old son, Eli.

I’m pretty sure I never asked him to be my life coach, it seems he just felt inspired one day to take it upon himself to give me advice. Well actually scream advice at me, while I was working out. I had just finished doing the first part of my P90X workout (working every little unknown muscle in my triceps, biceps, and chest) and I had moved on to AB RIPPER X. It is as hard as it sounds and I was doing my darndest to rip my abs, or whatever it was I was supposed to be doing to them (seeing how long I could endure intense cramping before I keeled over groaning in agony). Eli had been irrationally grouchy all morning and for some reason only known to him, and maybe other 3 year-olds across the world, he did NOT want me to work out. He’d been yelling at me all through the first part of the workout, but I was able to tune him out. It was only while I was lying on my back during AB RIPPER X that he came over, laid down next to me and started screaming repeatedly in my face, “YOU CAN’T DO IT! YOU CAN’T DO EXERCISE!!!!” It was a little bit hard to ignore and after several minutes of enduring this abuse, I started chanting the words in my mind. That was when I realized he must have been using some kind of reverse psychology to get me to work harder. He was so intent on (de)motivating me that he continued to scream at me from the stairs when my husband removed him and sat him in time-out. That’s dedication.

Over the next few days he followed me around, jabbing me here and there with verbal assaults that must have been designed to tear me down, so he could build me back up. Like the next morning when he told me, “Mom, you’re annoying my ears!” I couldn’t help but retort, “Well, you’re annoying MY ears.” But that only gave fuel to the fire as he just screamed it back at me, “NO, YOU ARE ANNOYING MY EARS!!!” Later, I was helping him get in the car and he protested in his best mini-adolescent whine, “Mo-om, you’re squishing me!” I said, “Oh, sorry.” To which he quipped in a voice that dripped with what sounded way too much like sarcasm, “Yeah. Really, really sorry.” Hmm. He even helps me stay in control of my eating habits. One afternoon I just casually mentioned to the room at large that I was hungry when he immediately quipped, “No you’re not!” Huh? I’m not? See, the kid just has my best interest at heart.

After a week or so of this verbal sparring it started to wear on me. His methods confused me. What was it he was coaching me to do? Although he seemed sincere in his efforts, one can only take so much crankiness. I did my best to stay the course, but one final incident forced me to question whether I should listen to the fascinating observations and advice of a 3 year-old. It was following the afternoon of The Haircuts.

I take it upon myself to cut my family’s hair: all seven boys. My daughter I happily send out, but I have the boy hair thing down to a science. Somehow they manage every time to all need their hair cut at once. (Probably because I wait until they resemble Elvis with his muttonchops or the Elves from the Lord of the Rings with their pointy sideburns.) So, every few months I announce that it is haircut time, we stick a movie in the DVD player and I start frantically snipping hair, my shears flying through the air at the speed of…a mom who has 96 minutes to cut seven heads of hair! Eli usually goes last because he is the hardest to convince that getting your hair trimmed is a good thing. Given his current disposition, that haircutting task was Herculean, but I managed it (Yay me!) and I thought his haircut turned out really cute. I even told him so. Well, that night he was in my bedroom with me and stood looking in the big mirrored doors of my closet, pulling a lock of his hair up to examine it, when out of the blue he started yelling, “I DON’T WANT A HAIRCUT!” “But Eli,” I responded, “Your hair is so cute now.” He replied in disgust, “I want cool hair! This is cute hair! Cute, cute, CUTE!” Then he ran down the hall yelling it over and over, “I WANT COOL HAIR, NOT CUTE HAIR! I WANT COOL HAIR NOT CUTE HAIR! CUTE, CUTE, CUTE!”

I’m guessing he’ll probably fire me as his hairdresser; well that’s fine. I’m going to fire him as my life coach. It turns out I don’t like his methods; they didn’t inspire me at all. I think I can capitalize on them though. I’ll just send him off to the CIA and see if they can use him on one of their interrogation teams. As long as they don’t call him cute, the arrangement should work perfectly.