maybe not too soon after all

There are days like yesterday, when I lament the passage of time and mourn the fact that my baby boy is heading off to kindergarten, and then there are days like today, when I try to give my children a bath and am bombarded with screaming: one shouting in his angry voice that he does not want toys in the bathtub, along with throwing said toys and hitting me because evidently the shouting is not enough to make me understand his fury at the idea that I would try to give him something to play with, while at the same time the other is howling in exaggerated pain from the merest drops of water coming in contact with the places on his elbow and knee where he fell and scraped himself yesterday.

Today is the sort of day where I find myself wishing that life had a remote control, because this morning I would have fast-forwarded to the year 2023 in the hopes that maybe by then my children would have learned to chill out once in a while. Or even if they hadn't figured it out by then, they'd both be out of the house and screaming and whining at their friends or employers or strangers on the street, just so long as it wasn't me anymore.