Hindsight & Hissyfits

Have you ever had one of those days that goes from good to bad in 6.7 seconds flat? This was today.

I woke up in a surprisingly pleasant mood after a surprisingly good night of sleep, and I thought it would be a great day to take the beasties to a gymnastics play date with some good friends. The sun was shining, no curse words had been muttered yet, and the day was full of hopeful possibility. I grabbed the kids out of bed, put on fresh clothes, brushed our teeth, got bottles and water for everyone, and we hit the road. We even stopped at Chick-fil-a, and I treated them to their first ever chicken biscuits on the way. I'm a really nice mom. 

Mostly.

As soon as we walked into the gymnastics arena, Bob decided to crawl up my legs like a deranged wild cat, screaming as if he'd just seen Freddy Krueger. He's the type of kid who takes a few minutes to warm up to a new environment. So the first 10 minutes were spent with me trying to engage him in the activities while he screeched manically and clawed at my muffin top. 

Looked a little something like this, except that tree would look a lot better in skinny jeans.

I could feel myself beginning to get a little annoyed that I had gone through the trouble of lugging us all this way for him, if he was just going to bitch and moan about it. Meanwhile, Vivi made herself right at home and immediately started practicing standing on the balance beam. 

Okay, okay, standing BY the balance beam. Whatever, it's practically the same.

After a few minutes, Bobby finally began to relax and started to climb on things and swing from the ropes.  Now this was what I had envisioned. He was running around and acting crazy-in-a-good-way. The way kids are supposed to. Vivi was sitting by me and playing with these foam blocks that I'd given her to stack. Everything was settling down and going fine. Then this little boy, who was maybe 6 years old, came up out of nowhere, and aggressively took Vivi's blocks away while muttering something about "that baby."

I said, "Sweetheart, that's not very nice. This baby girl is playing with those blocks. It's not nice to take things from a little baby."

So I got the blocks back, and Vivi and I started re-stacking them. A couple of seconds later, the kid came back swinging this sword-like apparatus and swung it at the blocks--and also Vivi--and it came just centimeters from Viv's face. That was when I snapped.

"Look here, kid. If you hurt my baby, I will hurt you. And I'm not even playing right now."

Well that escalated quickly.

After that, it was about time to head out. On our way to the car, I realized Vivi had a CODE BROWN in her diaper, so I laid her in the front seat and changed her while she wiggled and flipped. Meanwhile, Bobby was crawling around all over from the front seat to the back. I noticed that he was sipping on a day-old lemonade that I'd accidentally left in my car from before, but I figured it probably wouldn't kill him; I really wasn't paying much attention to him, as my attention was centered on not getting poo all over my front seats. Once the kids were buckled in, my friend and I headed to McAllister's for lunch.

Bobby kind of fussed the entire drive there, but I didn't think much about it, since toddlers are prone to complain about anything and everything on God's green earth. I'm to the point now where he's got to be bleeding from his ears for the fussing to bother me. We pulled up to the deli, and I was telling the kids that we were about to go eat lunch with our friends, and that they could have a cookie for dessert if they were well-behaved and ate their lunch. Yes, I bribe my kid with sweets. Don't even begin to judge me.

I began to unbuckle Bobby from his carseat when I realized that he was SOAKED. Sopping wet. And not I-wet-my-pants wet, but I-just-went-for-a-dip-in-the-pool-with-my-clothes-on wet. What the hell? And then I saw it. The cup of lemonade in the floorboard. The cup of lemonade in the floorboard that was laying by the smushed hashbrowns from this morning that I thought he ate. Lemonade had soaked through his shorts, through his socks and shoes, through his carseat, all over his toys, all over the books in the seat-back pocket, and all over nasty ass smushed hashbrowns. I sighed a big sigh. I guess I had been so distracted with changing Vivi's diaper that I failed to notice he had access to the lemonade cup. This was nobody's fault but my own. 

So I dragged my squirmy baby and my wet kid, sans pants, into the deli. (To clarify, Bobby was the one without pants, not me. Thank GOD). I've mentioned it before, but Bobby gets extra frisky when he doesn't have pants on. Then again, who doesn't?

He was especially active and jittery, and I was unable to read the menu with him nipping at my heels and trying play with the janitor's mop and bucket of dirty floor water. We decided that it would be best for everyone involved if we ate outside on their porch area. I put Vivi in her high chair and left Bob with my friend and her kids while I went back inside and was trying to decide what to order. I'm trying to lay low on carbs for right now, but I wasn't in a salad mood, so I decided to go for soup. I asked the girl at the register about the chicken soup; I can't have tomatoes or spicy things, so I wanted to make sure it would be okay. "Oh it doesn't have tomatoes, and it's not spicy, so you'll be fine," she assured me. I ordered that and a small kid's pizza and kid's nacho meal and went back outside with my 3 waters. Bobby was hanging around in his diaper eating his friend's nachos and acting pretty wild. Well, at least he will eat the nachos I ordered him, I thought. Vivi immediately tried to knock over the glasses of water that were sitting on the table, while Bobby was standing in a chair without pants. 

 

I moved the waters away from her, but I had to put one of the waters by my chair on the ground since we'd run out of room on the table. Our food came, but they forgot to bring spoons, so I ran back in to grab a couple. When I returned, Bobby was getting queso all over himself; he had smushed all of his chips into the queso and refused to eat one bite of it. So I offered him some of Vivi's pizza. Nope. The kid loves pepperoni pizza, but this was merely an unacceptable cheese pizza. Oh, the tragedy.

I gave Vivi a few bites of the pizza, and she proceeded to get marinara sauce all over herself. 

 I was beginning to get really annoyed, so I sat down and started to eat my soup. I took one bite of it and quickly realized that this soup A) had chunks of tomatoes in it, and B) was definitely spicy. So out of our $11 lunch, nothing got eaten. It was also at this time that I realized the seat of my pants was feeling damp. I stood up to find that I had been sitting on Bobby's lemonade-soaked shorts, thus soaking my own ass in lemonade. Awesome. 

Bobby was still acting a fool on the chair, so I picked him up and was trying to put him in the high chair, when he started fighting me--like physically fighting me from sitting in the high chair.

I told myself You are the mom; you WILL win this. I fought harder, and I won, but we knocked over the water that was sitting on the ground in the fighting process. It was at this point that I let the frustration overtake me. The hissy fit came oozing out of me faster than a fart in a windstorm. I rared back my leg and kicked the shit out of that glass of water. The plastic burst, water went everywhere, and the cup went out of the fenced-in area and into the parking lot. And of course, at that very second, a large man was walking through the door and caught my entire outburst. He stood there stunned for a minute before commenting, "Dang, girl! You kicked that like a soccer ball!" 

"Damn straight."

I calmly sat back down and pretended it didn't happen. I looked at Bobby and said, "okay, bud, it's time to eat a little more of your nachos." I knew he liked them because he had just been eating his friend's nachos before his plate arrived. Literally was.just.eating.them. So I knew he liked them. I dipped one of the chips in the queso, held it up to his mouth, and said "Yummm!" He looked at me and then tentatively put the chip in his mouth. I thought, okay, finally this lunch is about to turn around. Whew. And then Bobby made himself gag and spit the chip and cheese out all over himself, all down his clothes, and all over the table. 

"Okay, that's it," I said. I was about to snap. "Lunch is over. We are going." I apologized to my friend, loaded up my kids, and we left. I got into the car and began to to blubber underneath my sunglasses. Frustration spewed over the brim of my fragile psyche. I am tired. Not sleepy tired, but tired tired.  Tired of dealing with people who act like zoo animals on crack cocaine 24/7. I need a break. 

But you know what? I'm the mama, and I don't get a break. This is my job. This is my life. This is what I wanted. Plenty of women have way more on their plates than I do, and plenty of women have more kids than I do. And you know what else? They're just kids. Granted, Bobby was acting like a little A-hole and needed to be set straight. And I set him straight. But still, they're kids. They're supposed to get on my last nerve. In hindsight, I should have not erupted into an epic hissyfit at a deli, and I shouldn't have kicked a glass of water like a field goal. But you know what else? Being a mom to two little kids is the hardest job there is. It's okay to have a melt down every now and again. What matters is where to go afterward. I could wallow in my pissiness. Or I could put on my big girl panties, get over it, and not let it ruin the rest of my day. I decided to do the second.

It's true.

So I rolled the windows down and blared my favorite song (Led Zeppelin's "D'yer Mak'er"). And I screamed out the window like Tarzan until the frustration was gone. And I felt better.

Now we are headed to a dinner with friends and a weekend at the beach. And everything is going to be okay. Have a great weekened!

Keep on keepin' on.

-Annette