This morning was a bad, bad morning for my son and eventually me. I won’t bore you with all the details, but know it was related to morning hunger and control issues on the part of my son. He got more and more defiant, used increasingly unkind words and there were consequences.
His food was put into a bag and he was going to be able to eat it in the car, except when we got in the car the situation didn’t get better. He stepped up his level of whining and complaining so I stopped the car and put him out on the side of the road.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t far enough away from the house, so he just decided to go home, figuring he didn’t want to go to camp anyway. I called my husband to tell him I had made a poor choice and to watch for our child, who was incoming. In the meantime, I was going to try and figure out another alternative. As I came back around the block my son had decided he did want to get in the car after all. It was at that point a nice neighbor came along and wanted to help. She was nice trying to help, but ultimately it made no difference.
So now we’re very late and I’m chasing a child into the back of the car who’s decided he actually doesn’t want to get into his car seat or go to camp and I really lose my temper. I think I finally lost it when I was thanking my neighbor and realized I hadn’t even brushed my daughter’s crazy hair she went to sleep on wet, because I’d been dealing with my son.
The snapping on my part was bad and involved some venting via screaming on my end and some rough handling with my son, who was physically (and not kindly) put back in his seat. I went home, snatched the brush and bow out of my husband’s hands probably without thanking him and zoomed off.
I was worried because my son needed to eat. He would be fine if he would just eat. At about this time, my son told me he didn’t like it when I yelled at him. I told him I hated it when I yelled and it meant I had failed as a mom. I told him I never, ever liked yelling but I was so upset because I made breakfast for him and all he did was complain about it. Then, my son got over everything. Just like that. Suddenly.
He told me he wanted to make me breakfast tomorrow. He said he’d make me pineapple juice. When we got to school he wanted to hug me. And then hug me again. Then he wanted to kiss me and hug me a third time. And this is odd, because we’ve never done departure hugs as a family because drop-off at school is meant to be a brisk transaction, not a prolonged event that holds up the line.
When I picked the children up, my son said he wanted to play Legos with me later—just me. He said he wanted to go to dinner with me to Pei Wei. I got to thinking about it and decided we needed to do some separate parent and child time again so I told my husband.
We split off at dinner time and I took my son to Pei Wei. We talked throughout the meal without interruptions. He ate his entire meal and then decided he wanted to come home for mint chocolate chip yogurt popsicles. He told me he wanted to be a kid astronaut. He also said he wanted to build a spaceship.
I told him when we got home, we could eat our popsicles on the porch and I’d take a list of all the things he’d need to build the spaceship. We did, and this is what he said:
We’ll need lots of hammers. We need Rayan and Keira’s screwdrivers. We’ll need Nicholas’ screwdriver. The spaceship has a front, a back and a middle. The back is made out of hot liquid to make fire. The front is made out of metal so it can’t break if something crashes into it. Our spaceship has weapons: Fire Shooter, Ice Shooter, Water Shooter and Dirt Shooter. <laughs> Water and dirt make mud. The middle is made out of very hard plastic. Four people are in the middle and two people are in the front. They’re eating popsicles since there’s hot air on. It’s built by all the people in the town carrying it. We put the bottom on first, then the middle, then the top. Then we take off.I’ll let you know when he’s finished building his spaceship so you can book seats to view the launch.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: My daughter was very excited about selecting the restaurant for her dinner with just her and dad tonight. She was so happy to have a dinner alone with him that she wanted to sit on the same side of the booth…in a two person booth. They ate together, in close quarters, for the entire meal.
Fitness Update: I biked ten miles with my husband today. We haven’t done a route I call, “the splash” in a long time because it involves riding through a creek that changes height and muddiness with the weather. I’m glad I haven’t tried to go that route running, it’s messy enough on a bike.
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