Tag: tantrums

Arts and Craps

Let me just set the record straight. I don’t do arts and crafts, despite what the Scholastic website would have you believe. You all know how I’ve suffered for my art in the past. I thought that with the girls going to school, I might be able to get off the hook with having to drag out the box of glue sticks, pipe cleaner’s, finger paints and googly eyes. Yeah, so much for that.
On Friday at school, Co was sent home with a large construction paper turkey feather Accompanying instructions said to ask your child what she is thankful for and provide a pictorial display as well. I figured this would be a good activity for me and the girls on Saturday afternoon.
Mo, Co, and I sat around the table, crayons and paper in reach and got down to business. I asked Co what she was thankful for and she said “My mommy and my daddy and my Morgan and my me and my mommy and my daddy and my Morgan and my me and. . .”
Mo said, “Um. . .turkey, green beans, rice, carrots, lettuce, potatoes, and walnuts.” All of this from the child that only eats Chinese chicken and broccoli and chicken nuggets?
We select some pictures for Co to glue onto her feather and Mo is busy working away on cutting out pictures from a magazine.
So far, so good, but by now I should be able to recognize the calm before the storm. In a matter of minutes, the grabby-hands come out. Snatching of colored pencils begins, pencil shavings are dumped on the floor, a glue stick is being used as chapstick (though in hindsight that probably wasn’t a bad idea). Co is using rubber stamps and the stamp pad to decorate her face. Mo is yelling out orders to me on how to clothe her paperdolls.
“I want tights!”
“I want shoes!”
“I want different shoes!”
“The dress needs peplums!” (What is this? Project Runway?)
“This isn’t how Daddy does it!”
And wham-o! Mo is dissolving into a toddler sized puddle of snot and tears. She’s upset because Co won’t share the scissors. She’s upset because she can’t find a black crayon. She’s upset because she needs a new brown paper bag with which to make a paper doll because there’s the faintest trace of yellow crayon on the bag she has. She’s upset because Mommy has no idea how make ballerina princess paper dolls like Daddy. She’s upset because the moon is not in the seventh house and Jupiter is misaligned with Mars.
Her eyes fill with tears the way a glass fills with water. When she closes her eyes and opens her mouth to cry, those tears ping out of her face with surprising velocity.
I implore her to calm down. I beg her to stop crying. I tell her that I can’t help her when she’s so upset. My Greek chorus of one (a.k.a Co), says, “I’m calm down. I’m not crying. I’m not upset” which is like squeezing a can of lighter fluid onto a bonfire. Thanks, Co.
My patience for this entire project evaporated the minute I brought that construction paper turkey feather home on Friday so you can imagine the Herculean strength it is taking me to keep it together. I reach back into my Mommy arsenal desperately groping for some type of something to diffuse the situation. Hugs! Of course!
“Mo, come get a hug!”
She hiccups herself over to my lap and wipes her nose ofn my shirt. I wrap my arms around her, pushing scraps of paper off to the side, opting to forgo chastising Co as she rouges her cheeks with an inked-up rubber stamp — it’s non-toxic and I’ve got Lever 2000. When we’ve cooled our jets for a while, I ask Mo if she’s alright and she mumbles something into my chest.
“What was that, sweetheart?”
She lifts her head, her eyes round and glassy, and she says, “My dress needs puffy sleeves, too.”
Right, of course it does.

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IN: ON: November 7, 2009 TAGS: , , , , BY: Hilary
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Clean Up in Aisle Whine

One of the biggest myths about being a Stay-At-Home-Mom (SAHM) is that you actually get to stay at home. Seriously, I spend the better part of my day behind the wheel of my car, shuttling us between swimming lessons at the YMCA, playdates and lunch trips to the zoo, a grocery run at La Walla Marta, drop offs at the post office/dry cleaner/library, and a side trip to the Teeter
for the stuff I forgot to get at Wal-Mart because I left my shopping list in the front seat of the car.

It’s really a six in one hand, half dozen in the other type of situation.

So, we are in the Teeter. The wine aisle, appropriately, when the the battle begins. Mo and Co are in the carriage, with Mo in the front and Co in the back, precariously wedged between two cartons of milk, assorted produce and some free range eggs. I had started to place a few things in the front seat with Mo as the back was getting kind of crowded. Evidently, Mo needs her space, as she began to toss items over her head and onto her sister. Bag of salad? Toss. Stick of deodorant? Toss. Cake mix? Toss.

When I busted her mid toss, I told her flat out, that if she did it again, she was going to have to get out of the carriage. Fate worse than death, to be removed from the coveted front seat. Because Co can’t quite wrap her mouth around the phrase, “May I sit in the front of the carriage, please?” she ends up in the back. Hey, if you call shotgun, you get it, shopping carriages being no exception.

So, we’re tooling down the wine aisle in search of something light and crisp for dinner with friends, when out of the corner of my eye, I see a box of rice arc in the air and land in the back. Faster than she could say, “Sorry, Mommy,” I had Mo out of the carriage, on the ground, and Co up in the front with the buckle snapped. I know Mo was surprised because it took her a minute to get her bearings and whether or not if the situation warranted some tears. In her estimation, it certainly did.

Now, I don’t ever want to be that mom, tearing into a child’s behind and yelling to be heard over the histrionics of their overwrought toddler. Nor do I want to be the one who docilely implores the child to be rationale and calm, with promises of fruit snacks and TV shows in the car on the way home. I just want to have her stop crying, finish my shopping and go home.

I get down to her level, very close to her face so that she’ll have to look at me, and speaking very quietly, I tell her that she needs to stop crying. I tell her that I told her she would have to get out if she threw anything else in the back of the cart. To which she replied, “AAAAAAAAAAAhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!! eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!” and started sobbing and snuffling and snotting and huffing.

Suddenly, it was like the light bulb materialized over my head and clicked on. My mother’s voice filled my head, saying, “When they act the worst, they need the love the most.”

I grabbed her up in a big, big, hug. And she stopped crying.

Just like that.

Stopped crying, laid her head on my shoulder, wrapped her legs around my waist and just kind of deflated into my chest. I could hear my mom applauding me and I thought, “I am finally getting the hang of this mothering thing”.

And we got some cookies on the way out. Even me.

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IN: ON: June 20, 2009 TAGS: , , , BY: Hilary
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Suffering for my Art

Mo really likes to color. I mean she is definitely like this kid here:


And she will get out her notebooks, crayons, markers and stickers and do it up for quite some time all on her own. Until she thinks, “I haven’t heard from Mommy in a while. Hey, I bet Mommy wants to color, too!” Which wouldn’t be so bad, if a) I really did want to color and b) I could just take the crayons and scribble my heart out. To Mo, Mommy coloring equals sitting next to Mommy while barking orders at her like an overbearing, milk-breathed hyperactive, three-year old drill sargeant:

Now draw Cinderella!
With a tall hat!
And a long dress!
And a ring!
And long hair!
No, long hair!
No, I said LONG hair!!!

For the love of Pete! I’m drawing as fast as I can. I feel like Sandra Bullock in Speed, except, if I don’t draw the right thing, the right way, before she barks out the next order, hello toddler combustion! Good gracious! I have been reaching deep into my patience reserves whenever I see the crayons come out or whenever I hear her imploring little voice stringing the words “will”, “you”, and “draw”. See the thing is, I don’t mind it, really. I have gotten pretty good at whipping out those DP’s and their assorted accessories and paraphenalia. It’s just the threat of Toddle Def-Con 5 that makes me apprehensive.

Yesterday, we (I) were drawing at the kitchen table, Co contentedly gnawing on a hot pink Crayola while Mo shouted out her wishes in the chair next to me. As I drew, she inched closer and closer, up under my arm until I couldn’t even see the paper anymore. I kept reminding her to park her can on the seat, otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to draw anymore. The storm was brewing behind her eyes, but I nipped it in the bud with a quick, “Alright, what should I draw next?” (Did you guess Cinderella? Again?). Yeah, I need to start getting paid off of this or something. So I’m drawing and she’s issuing forth requests. We’ve got a tall, cone hat with hair coming out of the top, we’ve got a ring, we’ve got shoes, we’ve got it all. Mo then asks for tights. “Um, they’re under the dress,” I tell her. “You just can’t see them.” You’d a thought I promised her I was going to open a six-pack of whoop ass on her.

“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I WANT YOU TO DRAW SOME TIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHTS!!!!”
and her whole body went stiff as she propelled herself out of the chair and onto the floor. Tears shot out of her eyes like she was a cracked out Pez dispenser or something. Co looked at me like, “What’s up with that?” and I just shook my head. On the inside I was thinking, “Oh hell to naw. I am not going to deal with this. I’mma just pack this up and we’ll figure out something else.” but what I said, which took a Herculean effort, was, “Now Mo, I can’t draw anymore if you are going to carry on like that. Can you please stop crying?”

“Nnnnngggggggggghhhhhh! TIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHTSS! SHE NEEDS TIIIIIIIIIIGHTS!!”

“Mo, why don’t you stand up and wipe off your face so you can see the tights under the dress?”

“Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh (I think that’s the sound of snuffling and blubbering).”

You get the general idea of where the whole thing went. We decided to give the crayons a rest and try it again when everybody was a little more pulled together. Still, I’ve developed a type of involuntary shudder/ negative Pavlovian response to the word “draw” or seeing Mo approach with bag o’ crayons in hand. *shudder* I freakin’ love coloring. . .

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IN: ON: October 22, 2008 TAGS: , , , , BY: Hilary
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