Cave Paintings

Some of you, and you know who you are, are saying to yourselves, “how come he never says much about sweet little Reagan. It must be because, being a man, he focuses on the boy.” Don’t deny it, it has crossed your mind. Or maybe it’s just the voices in my head.
To which I respond, its not that I don’t pay attention to Reagan, it’s just that I have to focus so much more attention on Tiernan. Not by choice, but by need.
Reagan is stationary (for now). Reagan only needs tending to when she tells me she needs something, and my little princess has no compunction to keep such things to herself. The girl has a good set of lungs. When she demands attention, she can get the neighborhood’s attention.
However, she can’t walk or even crawl, and the chances of her turning on the stove are low. Tiernan, on the other hand, has a knob fetish.
Tiernan needs overseeing. Case in point, yesterday, Reagan and I were sharing a moment or two out in the kitchen. She was in her bouncy chair and I was singing some old time Ray Charles to her. She was smiling and happy and laughing at the crazy man dancing and singing in front of her. Reagan was happy. Daddy was happy. Tiernan was watching Thomas or Bob or Mickey Mouse or worse yet that whiny little runt Caillou.
Caillou is the worst of the bunch. Not a fan of the Caillou. Again, for the uninitiated, he is a whinny little four year-old boy who teaches other kids to be whinny little four year-olds. As if a toddler needs help in that department. You can argue the good points of the show, but he just a retarded Charlie Brown, without the outstanding supporting characters like Snoopy, Woodstock, Lucy and Linus, Pigpen, Peppermint Patty and her butch lover.
But, once again I digress.
So while Reagan and Dad are sharing a father-daughter moment or two in the kitchen – all smiles and belly laughs. Tiernan is watching TV, or so I thought. Just as the dancing and happiness in the kitchen was reaching its zenith, as Ray was singing, “ I got a girl way ‘cross town, that’s is good to me. She gives me money when I’m in need. She’s the kind of love I need. Ohhhh yeahhh!!” -- in walks the boy with some sort of unidentified brown stuff on his face, “Hey Da.”
My first thought is feces (he’s recently discovered that he can put his hands in diaper. Some kids make this discovery sooner than others, I was hoping he’d never have such a revelation.) but feces is quickly dismissed and replaced with chocolate. “Where’d you get the chocolate from?”  Thus, begins the investigation into what is on the boy’s face.
Into the den, I go, find that it is not chocolate, or feces -- thank God -- but the remains of a brown crayon. A brown crayon which has been used to makes toddler marks all over the couch, the window sill, and upon further inspection Tiernan’s legs.
As such, Reagan’s daddy-moment was interrupted by the need to discipline her brother and scrub the crayon marks off the furniture. By the time I got back, Reagan and Ray Charles are singing, “Here we go again.” And she was less happy with the silly man singing and dancing. In fact she was downright dour.
I guess this sort of disappointment, has been the bane of being the second child since humans have been procreating and the first born crawled out of the cave to pet the Sabertooth or started drawing on the walls of the cave in berry juice -- which is probably how cave painting started in the first place.
I don’t care what the text books say, cave painting was the result of distracted parenting. I fact, I would go as far as to assert, that the development of art as a whole, was the result of a frustrated parent trying to find something to keep a toddler busy, while they attended to the emotional, spiritual, and hygienic needs of a newborn.
After the two or three attempts to stop the cave painting behavior, primitive parent’s tune changed from, “Tagok, Stop drawing on my walls,” to “Tagok, would you leave your sister alone and go paint a picture on the cave wall for mommy.”
And to this day, parents still display their children’s artwork on the wall.