"I in there!"

Wednesday started out well enough. I'd gotten everyone out the door by 7:45, had lifted, crunched, and lunged for an hour in "Pump" at the gym, and then done thirty-five minutes on the treadmill while reading an article about the fiscal cliff and the history of taxation in America. By 10:15 I was relaxed, showered, and ready to devote myself to my kids' entertainment and enrichment.
"Where are we going?" Clayton wants to know after we've all piled back into the van.
"I thought we'd go to the library and then the park," I say. We need a fresh lot of library books and it's a cool but sunny day.
"No! I want to go home! I don't want to go there! I want to go home! I am NOT going there! I am NOT going!" Clayton is letting his worst colors show.
"We ARE going!"  Dee Dee baits him.
"I am NOT going!"
"We ARE going!"
I turn on the radio and ignore them, but am impressed nonetheless by Dee Dee's conjugation of the verb. Her language grows more sophisticated by the day.
The parking lot of the library is crowded-- story time is already underway-- so we have to park in front of the coffee shop instead, quite a ways from the library entrance. Clayton is still complaining. I am tired of his incessant negativity and tell him so. This is what we're doing, I say, and he's doing it, too. Then I bring out the big guns: complain anymore and he loses video time. I don't buy his rant anyway. He loves the library; he's just giving vent to a general bad humor that has hung over him since we drove the six hundred miles home from Florida.
Inside his mood lifts as he pulls Halloween book after Halloween book off the shelves. "I'm not going to get them all," he tells me. "Because I don't want you to be mad."
"I'm not mad," I say, exasperated. "I just don't see why you insist on reading  Halloween books when it's almost Christmas!"
Meanwhile, Sylvia has started to bawl. There's something in the display window she didn't get to see, Dee Dee has the Elmo book she wanted, I didn't understand something she was trying to say... She, too, has been fragile since we came home. She misses her Mimi, misses all the extra arms to pick her up and cuddle her.
Meanwhile, Dee Dee has pooped, and of course I left the diaper bag in the car. I herd everyone to the check-out desk. Dee Dee is pulling classical CDs out of a revolving case while I dig in my wallet for my library card.
"Here," I say, as I help her slide a CD back into place, "Hold this!" I hand her the coveted Elmo book, hoping to distract her from Beethoven  To the librarian I say, "There is nothing quite so stressful as coming to a library with a two-year-old." (Except, of course, coming to a library with two two-year-olds.) Secretly I am hoping to hear something reassuring or affirming, something like, "Oh, don't worry about it! Good for you for bringing them!" Instead, she just laughs a grim little laugh.
With the books piled high in my arms, we head for the door. Half way there Dee Dee stops abruptly.
"Check it out!" she demands, holding up the Elmo book.
"We did check it out," I explain. "You can hold it."
"Check it out! Check it out! Check it out!" she roars. In a rage she throws the book on the floor. "Check it out!"
I set the stack of Halloween books down by the door (of all days not to have a bag!) and move to pick her up. She bolts across the library, and I have to race to catch her. An white-haired man on a computer smiles at me sympathetically, and I am grateful.
The fifty yards back to the car feels like a gauntlet, stretched before me. Why am I so empty-handed? I'd give my eye teeth for the Ergo, for a bag for these damn books. We walk along the sidewalk in front of the library, the post office. Dee Dee has calmed down, but Sylvia is walking sideways, clinging to my legs, trying to block my way. "Hold you! Hold you!" she pleads. We are almost there when, once again, Dee Dee stops in her tracks.
"Come on, Dee Dee!" I call. I feel perilously out of control. As I put the books down to retrieve her, she bolts again, this time across the parking lot! I sprint after her-- no time to tell Sylvia to wait, or Clayton to stay with his sister. It is an awful, sickening feeling, to have left the two of them unattended by the car so I    can chase after their willful sister.
In a matter of seconds I am back, Dee Dee screaming in my arms, to find Clayton and Sylvia still standing by the car. A passerby has paused to watch. "Do you need help?" she asks, looking concerned. I've already gotten the van door open; Clayton and Sylvia are climbing inside.
"I think I'm okay now," I say, although I don't feel okay. I feel tense, foolish, and unnerved, as if I've just dodged a bullet.
  Dee Dee writhes around on the floor while I get the other two buckled in. She is furious that I have interrupted her Forrest Gump routine. "Keep running in the parking lot!" she screams. I change her poopy diaper with her still howling face down on the van floor.
My first instinct is to retreat to the security of home, but I'd also rather not let Clayton get his way, however indirectly. Still, there's no way I'm going to bite off trying to get them all the two hundred yards uphill to the playground behind the library at this point. Instead, we stop at the sports park on the way home. At first, Clayton refuses to get out of the car, but when I close the door to leave him inside, he changes his mind and joins us.
There's another two-year-old at the park, which helps lift spirits. Then a good friend of mine joins us with two boys Clayton's age, and things look up even more. Dee Dee goes down the big slide fearlessly. As soon as her feet hit the ground, she says, "Do it again?" and races for the steps. Clayton, as usual, has to frame his play in an elaborate make-believe scenario:
"Mom, pretend you're a little girl and you see the monsters up here and you think it's a monster pet store and you try to buy one but it's really a monster zoo."
      Sylvia is inspired by the other little girl and abandons my legs. She climbs under the play structure. "I in there!" she says. "I in there!" It is a phrase she repeats constantly these days, sometimes as a sort-of "Look at me! I'm under the table! (in the bath!) (tangled up in string!) Often, though, there seems to be no "there," no physical place or tangible thing that she is "in," so the statement comes across more as a rumination on identity than a declaration of location. It's as if she's realized that, in fact, she is "in there," that she is a separate little being inside her skin. When she looks in the mirror, a spoon, the reflection on the oven door, she still says, without fail, "Dee Dee in there!" So maybe "I in there!" is just a joyous recognition that even if she sees Dee Dee everywhere, she knows she's in there, too.
Before long it's time to go home. "I have to poop!" Clayton says as we leave the playground. Unfortunately, the restrooms have been locked for the winter, two port-a-potties set up in their stead. I recommend holding it until we get home, but he insists on going in. I hold the door open; he pees while studying the contents inside the john. I am not easily grossed out, but that about does it. Still, it's relatively clean for a port-a-potty and I'm dying to pee, too. It'll only take a second, and I can hold the door ajar to keep an eye on the kids. I lower my jeans and hover over the seat.
"I'm coming!" Dee Dee declares.
"I'm coming!" Sylvia echoes.
Clayton obligingly holds the door open wide so they can clamber inside. Probably even the library would cede second place to a port-a-potty on a list of places I'd rather not have two toddlers. With the door wide open, I might as well have squatted by a bush as Clayton first suggested. I am exposed, grossed out, and... giggling. We are the port-a-potty version of the many clowns in a little car, and they are all so pleased with themselves. Despite the circumstances, I find myself relishing the moment of solidarity.
"I in there!" Sylvia says happily.