I am turning into a Smug Married

For me, the epitome of the Smug Married is Magda in Bridget Jones’s Diary (because, of course, my life is patterned on that book) and I think I am turning into her. [Why, though, does Magda have such an ugly name? Then, again, Bridget it hardly ideal either so maybe there is no nomenclature discrimination against Smug Marrieds here and I am just being over-sensitive.]

Anyway, there is this scene in BJD where Bridge is on the phone with Magda and she keeps punctuating the conversation with such exclamations as “in the potty!” (addressed to her child, who is obviously running around diaperless and ready to deposit a turd on the carpet… well, obvious to other SMs anyway). And then, on the weekend, I did just that. Was talking to a friend on the phone about such adult and intellectual stuff as why art is good for the soul and suddenly started hissing “not there, not there!” and other directions at Benji who was trying to open a cabinet in the bathroom while my friend tried to make sense of it all. The weird thing is she didn’t actually get that I was talking to Benji and said “oh, you mean not in Hong Kong” thereby proving how big the gulf between SMs and Singletons really is (though she is not actually single but just ‘no kids’). An SM would immediately know that the “not there” was meant for the kid and not part of the conversation. Finally, in typical Magda-esque fashion the conversation ended with baby wailing and SM cutting off friend mid-sentence with promises to call later which, of course, never materialise.

Then later in the playroom I almost had a fight with a four year old. The playroom in our building is overrun by badly-behaved children (yes, I know, this is a typical SM statement) who are unfazed by the presence of adults (not their parents) watching their selfishness in horror. So, there’s this area in the playroom with toys for babies but the older kids keep taking the toys out of the area and holing them up somewhere where the babies cannot find them. On Sunday, when we entered, this group of older kids had a huge pile of toys in a tub and Benji saw it and waddled over. This little girl screeched at him and then looked at me defiantly. I gave her a tremendous glare and was ready to do battle but then decided to take Benji away as there were only two toys in her pile; the other kids had grabbed and run away with the others. But generally, I was on the verge of taking her to task. V went “Were you just going to fight with a four-year-old?” and I was like “Yes!”

On the subject of the playroom, it is interesting and sometimes heartbreaking to watch the dynamics between the kids. I see kids being mean to other kids and there’s nothing one can do. One wonders whether one would prefer one’s kid to be the bully or the bullied.

At around six months, Benji started making a beeline for other kids’ toys. Basically, he wanted to check out what they were doing. I noticed this with a lot of the baby boys his age…not so much the girls. My policy is that I don’t let Benji grab another kid’s toy but if the parents are open to it, I’d like to see if the two play together (which sometimes, though rarely, happens). If another kid comes for Benji’s toy, I don’t rush to his defense. I wait to see what happens. Benji is generally ok (in fact more interested) if some other kid is showing interest in his toy but if that kid tries to grab his toy, he doesn’t take it lying down and has been known to grab his toy back… which I’m pretty relieved about.

V and I were watching some older kids being mean to a little girl and I said “would you rather your kid be the bullier or the bullied” and he gestured to Benji who was yelling and protesting because I had just put something out of his reach and was like “Do you really think he’s going to be the bullied?”