Hammy

Because I’m a mom and my daytime television is exclusively animated, I’ve see a lot of kids movies. Like… A LOT. One of my favorites is an older movie called Over the Hedge. It’s about a bunch of woodland animals and the plot doesn’t really matter here – what matters is Hammy.

Hammy is a red squirrel. He’s got a massive case of ADHD and never stops talking or moving. In the final scene, Hammy drinks a Red Bull and moves so fast that the Earth itself slows down. He always wants a cookie. In short, Hammy is a animated version of Boogie.

Boogie was supposed to be my sole hope for a sane, even-keel child. Bean is perpetually steeped in preteen funk and spends her days with earbuds in, listening to emotional Englishwomen lament on a piano. Noodle and Roo have never, ever been either sane or even-keel and Pook is a full time job in her own right. But then there was Boogie. My sweet, sleepy, pudgy little baby who always smiled. Boogie ate everything he was offered and slept for 15 hours a day. Those doughy cheeks would pool around his face like a basset hound when he’d nap and if he wasn’t sleeping, he was happy. I swear, the kid didn’t cry for the first six months or so. My mom kept warning me that my brother was the exact same way “right up until he turned three” and I’d scoff. Surely no God was so cruel as to give me FIVE Tasmanian Devils for progeny, right?

Ha.

Boogie turned three last month. I think someone fed him after midnight under a sun lamp because my fuzzy little Gizmo went solid Gremlin overnight. Last week, I left him with Bean for twenty whopping minutes while I grabbed the boys from school and returned home to find he’d dumped three boxes of pectin and a container of orzo all over the pantry. Yesterday, he filled his brother’s Nerf gun with chunks of cheese hotdog and shot them at the dog. And today, he’s thrown a complete tantrum over Walmart being sold out of strawberries and has somehow stolen/hidden the three foot long piece of trim off the bottom of the refrigerator.

Y’all. I literally cannot keep up with this kid. I don’t even think Hammy with a Red Bull would slow the world down enough to allow me the time necessary to Boogie-proof at that level. This piece of the fridge is as tall as Boogie himself. Melissa was literally IN THE KITCHEN when he took it. And now both Dad and I have torn the entire house apart looking for the damn thing to no avail. How do you hide a toddler-sized piece of plastic that quickly? And is waterboarding still against the law? I’m entirely sure he knows where he put it and just won’t tell me.

Speaking of naps, at this very moment the littles are supposed to be doing just that. Instead, I hear Boogie pogo-jumping in his bed while Pook shouts, “NOOOOO!” from hers. The girl had a full day at preschool and just wants a snooze, but brother says not today. They used to have music in their room until Boogie unplugged the CD player and poured his milk inside three nights ago. My fridge used to have a piece of trim on the bottom. Boogie is literally the reason we can’t have nice things.

And now it’s time for me to head to Amazon. Today’s order will include case of Red Bull for Boogie, a CD player for Pook and an Amateur Waterboarding Kit for me. It’s time to break the Fatboy’s silence, and then, Lord knows, we both need a nap.