Toddlers and Reading about World War I

 It occurred to me this morning that when James was the age Max is now I used to give him breakfast like a dog.

No, really. It's true. He's always been an early riser and I've always sucked at mornings. So he'd wake me up and I'd go sit on the couch while I tried to wake up and put a bowl of dry Cheerios (James has never liked milk on his Cheerios) on the floor for him to snack on.

During quarantine and remote school, it was more or less James's job to get breakfast for him and his brother. I'd help as needed. 

These days they eat while I try to get us all ready for our day and more often than not it's a Z bar. 

Motherhood of a toddler is exhausting this week.

Max has gone into full three year old mode. His favorite word is no and he tells me regularly that he doesn't like me. You know what toddlers are? Verbally abusive, that's what. He refuses to poop in the  potty and then runs away when it's time to change his stinky pull up. Today I thought, well, maybe he's tired. If we go for a drive I bet he'd rest a little bit and that would help. Nope.

I love toddlers. They are funny and creative and say exactly what they are thinking and I love watching their minds work. My sophomore year of college was rough for many reasons but on Thursdays I volunteered at a Head Start with three and four year olds. I LIVED for those Thursdays.

But right now I just really want to sit down alone with no one crying on me and read about World War I and be left alone. Which is not going to happen.

I'm rereading Rilla of Ingleside. As a kid, I LOVED Rilla of Ingleside. It is the last of the Anne of Green Gables books and it focuses on Anne's youngest daughter Rilla (short for Bertha Marilla of course) and her war years in Canada from the ages of 15 to 19. As a kid this book captivated my imagination and launched a fascination with World War I that continues to this day although at the time I couldn't tell you anything about World War I except it was longer in Canada than here. I remember asking my dad the history teacher to explain World War I to me...World War II is so easy to explain, the Nazis and Pearl Harbor. He told me World War I was really hard to explain and wouldn't make much sense. I was offended by this, figuring he was blowing me off because I was a kid. I'm an adult now and I know that...World War I is really hard to explain and doesn't make much sense. It's depressing to think about so much death and destruction for absolutely no purpose...and the century of conflicts it launched. Scary stuff. But I still find the literature of World War I fascinating...the poets and all. It was a time where poets and writers really told the story of war in a way that hasn't happened before or since. There weren't newsreels but there were a generation of very literate and well educated soldiers.

I was thinking today that when James was a newborn I was reading a book about World War I battlefields. It's...not a good idea to read stuff like that while a newly postpartum NICU mom but I was fascinated by the book and had trouble making myself put it down. I finally told Josh to hide it from me and I honestly to this day don't really know where this book is.

So yep. That's the story here. Trying to parent a toddler who doesn't want to be parented and really wanting to read about World War I. Media consumption, other than Rilla of Ingleside which I've been listening to on audio I'm kind of reading Set me Free, the companion to last year's Show me a Sign that I loved so much. But I haven't really gotten into it. I'm reading Ancestor Approved which is short stories about a powow and that's good. I just put Guns of August, which is a World War I nonfiction book that has been sitting on my shelf for ages, onto my phone as an audiobook to try listening to that. And I'm still watching way too many reruns of Friends.

Today I'm grateful for my husband, Burgermaster, leftover Halloween chocolate, writing, a good night's sleep, and that it isn't currently raining.