I love my minions, I really really do. There isn’t a thing I wouldn’t do for them or a day that goes by where I don’t feel absolutely blessed to have them in my life. They are my life, and they make me smile every day. Sometimes I look at them and see how perfect they are. Little hands and little feet. Big brown eyes and light brown hair. I just want to pinch their little cheeks and hug them until they pop! Well maybe not pop, that wouldn’t be good, but you get the picture. And yet with all this love for my minions swirling around inside me; I still can’t get past that one major flaw that they both have. That one thing that God, for some awful reason probably a joke to pay me back for all the things I did before having kids, forgot to ‘instal’…..the mute button.

Seriously though, is this too much to ask for? A simple mute button, that’s it. It doesn’t even have to be physically located on the minions, I really don’t mind carrying around a remote of some sort. Just please God, make it stop!!! Theo isn’t really that bad, he really needs more of a stop or rewind button to deter his emotional meltdowns. It’s Pheobe, the Devil Wears Pigtails, who needs the mute button most of all.

She gets stuck in a rut, a verbal rut, where she says the same thing over and over and over and over and over…….and over, until….well, until she feels like stopping.

Pheobe: Mommy, I poopied.

Me: You did?

Pheobe: Mommy, I poopied.

Me: You did?

Pheobe: Mommy, I poopied.

Me: *for crying out loud*

Pheobe: Mommy, I poopied.

Me: You did?

Pheobe: Mommy! I poopied!!!

Me: Did you poopy?

Pheobe: Ummmmm, yeah. *runs away*

Me: *seriously, someone save me*

And she does this, with EVERYTHING! She’s THAT kid. She is that glitch they talked about in The Matrix, the glitch tha means something bad is about to happen.

And usually it does. These verbal ruts are usually followed by blood curdling scream screech. It’s horrible. The worst sound in the world. Words cannot describe this deafening sound that comes out of such a little person. She doesn’t always do this after a verbal rut, sometimes she does it for fun. Yes, fun. She thinks its funny. She will come up behind me in the kitchen and screatch for no reason what-so-ever except to make me jump and drop whatever it is I’m holding.

I have no more wine glasses left, I have bruises on my feet, and my nerves are shot. Every time she lets out a screech I can feel a new grey hair come shooting out of my scalp like a bottle rocket. And then it sits there waving at me as I stare blankly into the mirror and contemplate my rapidly aging self. My mother always tells me that kids are payback for everything I ever did to give my parents a hard time. This reminds me my parent’s wedding photos with my father standing there with a head full of fluffy red hair. With in 3 years all that fluffy red hair turned into fluffy white hair…all thanks to yours truly.

So this is my fate. Pheobe will in fact turn all my beautiful reddish brown hair to white before my face even has a chance to catch up. So I ask you yet again God, please please PLEASE get on that mute button thing before this evil devil wonderful child runs me to an early grave. Please with a cherry on top?