Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

Children & motherhood

Hard to say I’m sorry

My son is “serving time” in his crib for biting his sister. It’s the second time this week he’s left a visible mark on a part of her body. The first time, he drew blood. And he’s the younger one of the two.

Sigh.

I know this isn’t by far the worst it will get as a parent. (We avoid the “p” word around here … ya know, puberty. That’s years away but we still dread it.)

But it’s frustrating. There’s no real rhyme or reason. We send him to timeout, which works, kind of. He resists timeout, but he’s willing to hug his sister afterwards.

He WILL NOT, however, say the words “I’m sorry.” He’s 2. And his vocabulary is such that he can it say but chooses not to.

Tonight, as he protested, “but I can’t” when I asked him to tell his sister he was sorry, I had a Chicago flashback.

Indulge me, will you?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLVKd1lhgOQ]

There, that’s better. I think you could change a few words in the song and it would apply to these two siblings who seem to have a love-hate relationship.

It’s not like my son is unique, though. He’s human, and if you haven’t noticed, we, humans, have a hard time with “sorry.” My first reaction when confronted with something I might or might not have done wrong is to find someone or something else to blame. “Sorry” is a last resort.

I was reminded of this yesterday when my husband brought up something that I hadn’t even realized I was guilty of doing. I wanted to find a reason to not be in the wrong, but in the end, I had to swallow all those excuses like a piece of overcooked broccoli and spit out the words, “I’m sorry.” Like the broccoli, it left a bad taste in my mouth, but I knew it was good for me.

I know that an apology doesn’t always fix things and that people who aren’t sorry can say the words and nothing changes. (And that some people are quick to apologize for things they didn’t do and have no control over.) But sometimes the words, sincere or not, are a start.

My son was given three or four chances tonight to apologize to his sister. He kept wanting to hug her and stuck to his original story of why he wouldn’t apologize: “I can’t.”

Maybe it’s true. Maybe he knows he wouldn’t mean it. (That would be awfully deep for a 2-year-old, I think.)

Or maybe he’s 2. And that’s all there is to it.

At least he has that as an excuse. I’m not sure it would work for me. (But, I’m only 33! I didn’t know better. Yeah, right!)

When do you have trouble with apologies? How do you overcome it? When was the last time you said “sorry” and meant it? How do you react when someone says “I’m sorry”?

The golden (birthday) child

Dear son,

Two years ago today, you pushed your way into our lives hard and fast. And you haven’t slowed down since.

Before you were born, I feared I wouldn’t love you enough, what with your big sister’s big personality. Now, I think sometimes I love you too much. You instinctively call for me and in the process shun help from others. I secretly love it, even when I force someone else to respond to your needs.

 We understand each other in a way I wouldn’t have expected. Our personalities mesh. We don’t need people all the time. We’re content by ourselves. And we don’t want to be left out of anything. I’m looking forward to seeing how this develops in both of our lives.

You’re officially two today, but unofficially, you’ve been 2 in my mind for a long time. You walked before you were 1. You’ve been talking — to keep up with your sister — for practically as long, it seems. Nothing stops you or slows you down — not even the bumps and bruises of life that seem to find you more than they ever found your sister.

You are all boy, and though sometimes, I have no idea what to do with that, I love the differences you’ve brought to our lives. “Boy — a noise with dirt on it.” I saw this definition on a piece of scrapbooking paper. I laughed at the time, thinking it was clever. Now I know it’s true, too.

If there’s a puddle, you jump in it and splash through it. If too many leaves are gathered in one spot, you shuffle through them with a big grin on your face. “Again?” you ask, answering with another run-through before I’ve had a chance to answer. If you’re holding one object, you must find another to hit it against. And sometimes, you just rock out to your own beat.

And the sweetness. You aren’t always noisy or dirty or mischievous. Sometimes, you are so sweet, I want to cry.

“Please I may?” You’ve found the secret to getting your way. It doesn’t matter what you’re asking, when  you ask with these words, my heart screams, “Yes!”

You faithfully give hugs (squeezes), kisses and noses, and your soft “I wuv you” is heart melting.

Some days, I want to skip the next 20 years and see what you become. OK, I don’t really want to skip them, but I want to see how God uses this personality. I joke that you’re going to play football because knocks to the head don’t seem to faze you. Your mother is another story. If you do play football, I will be the mother in the stands who can’t look but who will be there to support you, nonetheless.

A few hundred words can’t adequately capture all of who you are.

Maybe a video will help.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYc8Y9Xi7bQ]

And another picture.

It’s true that we seem to take less pictures of just you than we did of your sister. I confess that we celebrated every milestone in picture with her. I fear the condition of your baby book compared to hers.

But don’t ever believe that we loved you less than her. Yes, she was our first child. But you are our first son. And that is something special, too.

Happy birthday, little man. You won’t stay little, so I’ll say it as long as I can.

The journey to 2 has been a wild ride so far. I’m certain the next year will bring us more wild times, too.

Love,

Mom