Whine x 2=Wine x 2

My younger brother told me long ago when his daughter was three years old, that she was driving him nuts; "the whining, I just can't take the whining. I lose my mind". I heard him, but the severity of it really didn't register . By the time my niece was three, I had three boys under five. We had lived through having a non-verbal #1 who would stand in the kitchen and scream until we figured out what he wanted, but we didn't have a whiner. I asked him if it was that bad. It couldn't possible be as bad as the screaming a non-verbal kid does when frustrated. "It is horrible," he replied, "it's a girl thing. Something about them makes them so whiny."

Yea, ok. I thought. It's his first, he's a rookie. He'll get used to it. It can't be that bad.

A couple of years later, we added twin girls to the mix and when the twins hit three, my brother's words resonated loud and clear. He was right. The girls would whine. The type of sound that makes finger nails on a chalk board sound like muzak. They used whine as an accent for communication when it wasn't the dominant one. And when they didn't feel like using any of those girl words they had, the whine took center stage. They'd be whining about something, losing a toy, a sparkle had fallen off their shoe, they wanted attention, Mommy not sharing her beer, anything. But somehow, asking a kid who has no problem using their words any other time of the day becomes an issue when they NEED to.  "Use your words", I'd say, as I said a million times before, but the words had left them.  I then had to try to guess what the crisis was . After failing miserably, and frustrated, the countdown began, I had 10 seconds of patience left before I lost my mind and I told them exactly what I thought of Rainbow Dash. Someone was going to time out and I wanted it to be me. I'll put that time-out stool right next to the beer fridge.

The boys never did that. It is painful and can cut right to the core like no other sound. I think that the hospital should hand out noise-canceling-headphones to all new parents of baby girls. "Congratulations on your baby girl. Here are your headphones. Good luck."

I  also think that the US government should shift gears and view toddler whining as a weapon of mass-destruction. If we just flew big speakers over Afghanistan and let the whine of thousands of girl toddlers flow through the cities, they would surrender in 10 minutes. We could save thousands of lives by whining them into submission. Only the deaf would prevail as the immune ones, but somehow, I think the vibration of it would work on them too.

On second thought, I know it would. After we entered the whine-stage, my neighbors never looked at us the same. Through telepathy, I heard "please, make it stop." And I never looked at a bottle of wine the same either.  I would if I could, but the duct tape only muffles the sound. Wine anyone?