Welcome to Crazy Town. Population: 4

~By Alan Kercinik

I have two little men. Jack is three. Reid is nine months.

Having a three-year old is like living with a small, angry foreigner, with the strange English and violent demands capped with exclamation points. But having two boys? It’s like living in an insane asylum. And not one of the nice ones.

There is sudden, unexpected violence and roughhousing.

Wife/Voice of Reason: Jack! Quit climbing on Baby Reid.

Jack: Why? He’s not crying.

There is eating. Constant, never-ending eating. At all hours. One morning, I feared Reid was going to do an Alien face grab on me as he went for his bottle, which I did not give to him quickly enough because I have not yet found a way to hand it to him while I’m still mixing the formula and water together.

There are the obsessions, with poops and butts and genitals. Jack has asked why poops are brown and, curious boy that he is, if they can be purple. He wants purple poops, which is the type of thing that would send an adult screaming to a doctor. He also wants to “poop your butt,” a phrase in heavy rotation. We still do not know what it means. Does he want to put a poop up my butt? Does he want to sculpt a butt statue out of poop? All options are equally terrifying.

There are the “Why did you do that?” moments. Reid recently crawled into a coffee table, one of those with a tray underneath, so that he was stuck there like an over-sized, unopened book of art. He cried, as if angry at me, for not warning him.

There is unexpected nudity. We are no great fans of kids’ music in our house, so we play what we like. Which does not include The Wiggles. Before bed, Jack will stand against his bedroom wall, naked, and say, “I want to be Gotye.” He’ll sing a couple lines, then say, “Paint me.”

It’s hard to know if any of this is normal. I don’t remember being three years old. My wife was never a three year-old boy. We have no frame of reference. So the crazy shit. It all becomes our normal, and now it’s starting to take a lot to get a reaction out of us.

We wouldn’t have it any other way. Maybe that means we’re crazy too. Or maybe we’re just raising boys.

Alan is the mastermind behind the hilarious blog Always Jacked.