This day started bad (when I woke up at 3:00 a.m. and never got back to sleep) and got worse from there. Sarah woke up way too early, which almost always portends a bad day for everyone. Then I inexplicably ignored my motherly intuition and allowed the kids to watch "Charlotte's Web". It was a cute movie, and Sarah loved it, but the whole reason I've never read them the book is that I know it would devastate my sensitive Noah. He teared up at the beginning when Fern's mean dad wouldn't let her keep the pig, and he came unglued when Charlotte died at the end. He dove under the blanket and sobbed for an hour. He was out of sorts the rest of the morning.
I was a little like that when I was a kid, but not to that extreme. I remember watching "Frosty the Snowman" and feeling very sad when Frosty melted. The fact that everyone was dancing around and singing about how he'd be back again someday, was no consolation to me.
Meanwhile, I barked at Sarah nonstop about character issues. I decided to make her into a responsible and content person in one day, by constantly correcting her, and often not nicely. I've been reading a parenting book written by an old fart who thinks that "an unhappy child is a healthy child" and that children should behave as little adults. I'm not sure why I'm reading it or why I let it affect who I am and who I think my children should be, but I ran the house like a drill sergeant on PMS today.
During quiet time, Sarah was banging her fairy wand against the wall like a lunatic, and then she started crying because it broke. She wanted me to fix it, and instead of sympathizing with her frustration, I followed the old fart's advice and said, "I can't fix it. You're the one who broke it." She wanted to have a funeral for it after quiet time. I told her to take a nap. She sobbed for 15 minutes.
A few minutes later, she came out (still during "quiet" time), carrying a broken necklace and whimpered, "Mom, can I have a word with you? My heart is broken into smithereens because of 1) your anger at me, 2) my broken fairy wand, and now 3) my broken necklace." She said all this very sadly through tears, sticking up each finger as she listed the corresponding offenses. I rocked her awhile and apologized for being angry with her and sent her up to take a nap. I did some crying of my own around that time.
Sarah didn't nap. Noah came out from quiet time, all wet and puffy. He said, "I cried all through quiet time, because I was remembering when we went up in the Sears Tower and went to that little park in Chicago and Dad wasn't there and I'm so sad that he couldn't be there to experience what we did and why did Charlotte have to die?" Among the three of us, our total tear output was probably a pint today.
My afternoon plan was to clean out some toys and organize some things, but I gave up on that and told the kids we were going outside to get some fresh air and a fresh start on the day. We jumped on the trampoline and almost took off flying with the huge wind gusts. Then I decided to take us all to Steak 'n Shake for happy hour (half price milkshakes), because we seriously needed a happy hour.
I stopped reading in mid-book, which I almost never do, and switched to "I'm Glad I'm a Mom", by Jill Savage. Ahh...much better.
1 comment:
I think we all have times like these, don't you? I mean even the best of us! :-) In the 9 years I've been taking care of and helping to raise the Migit kids, I have never once raised my voice to them. I have however at the end of a day, stood back and thought, boy I wasn't talking very nice to them today they were really on my last nerve. Thankfully, kids are easy to forgive....and cute at it! :-)
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