Where Do You Draw the Line?

I'm wondering where the "bad mother" line is.

I mean, it's obvious that beating your children, leaving them home alone for a few days and/or teaching them to drive you home from the bar are on the bad side. But what about appearing on Toddlers and Tiaras? Never attempting to feed them vegetables? Only letting them listen to Raffi?

I feel like the line is blurry in some places.

For example, what about not minding when they're sick? It's not that I want them to feel bad - of course not. But to be calm and quiet? To lay around watching age-appropriate television? To not demand food every 5 minutes? To not fight about toys? To know that we have to stay home, lest we infect the rest of the population?

It's kind of awesome.

And I say that after cleaning up a lot of vomit this morning. Now we're on to strategically placed trash cans, unlike this morning. But they were fine when they went to bed last night. Stupid stomach virus.

Anyway, I'm wondering if enjoying this day at home, with lots of quiet and hugs, makes me a bad mom. Wouldn't a good mom be crying at their pathetic little faces? Or dragging them to the ER for fluids? Or something other than blogging and refilling water bottles and hugging?

It's not that I expect myself to be the perfect mother. That's a dream that gets ripped out of your hands when the second kid comes 15 months after the first and is colicky to boot. And anyone who's read this blog for a while knows that I can be on shaky terms with "good mother" as well. But I never thought I'd cross into "bad mother" territory. Yet here I am, feeling a sense of accomplishment and peace as my 2 older children nap on the couch and the little guy plays quietly.

Am I the only one?

Two Year Old or Sociopath?

Let's suppose that as you drop your older son off at preschool, your younger son spots the younger sibling of another student. He steps toward the 15 month old, who is half his age, and smacks him in the face. He moves to do it again as you grab him and say, "No!" Then he throws himself on the floor sobbing while you try to explain to the other kid's mom what the hell happened.

Please note that he stops sobbing and grins the second you pick him up.

And let's also suppose that when this same child actually gets mad, he bites. He has bitten everyone in the family more than once and not even being bitten back has stopped him.

Oh, also suppose that this child has literally the most charming smile you have ever seen.

Would you be worried? Would you think, "I know 2 year olds are obnoxious, but this seems a little extreme. I mean, his siblings are actually afraid of him!" Would you start thinking that maybe it's time to find a therapist? 

Or would you just assume that he's going to run a cult or a small African country someday and try to stay on his good side? 

BTW, this all COMPLETELY HYPOTHETICAL. Of course no child of mine goes around hitting and biting people. 

Bad Mother Chronicles, part 1196

Someday I will get a reputation as a competent mother. It may not be until my kids go to college and they don't need me to call their professors for them, but it WILL happen.

Someday was definitely not today.

Today I let Ironflower and Lovebug climb on the snow piles and iced over playground after school. It was sunny and well over 40, so a number of kids were actually playing after school. It was nice. But Hugmonkey got bored quickly, since I didn't trust him on the ice and snow. Though it was fun to chase him through the impromptu kickball game a bunch of third graders were attempting. Anyway, I yelled to the big kids that it was time to leave. They began making their way across the icy playground.

I looked down and Hugmonkey wasn't there.

He was half way across the blacktop, heading for the door into the school building. Or the parking lot. It was hard to tell which. Luckily I caught up with him. Actually, I didn't really catch up with him so much as one of Ironflower's friend's moms blocked his run. So then Ironflower came running up. When I looked to see where Lovebug was, I discovered that he was still on the playground.

I yelled to him that it was time to leave. He yelled back, "I know - but I can't!" He'd fallen in the icy snow, another mom helpfully mentioned to me. He told me he was stuck. Ironflower offered to rescue him and walked around to where I could see him better. He kept slipping, but he made it. In tears. I felt horrible. Not only did I let him play on the ice, I didn't even watch him while he was on there!

How in the hell do people handle more than 3 kids? Or triplets?

It's really a wonder that Kate and Jon Gosselin aren't MORE insane.

Why My Children Will Need Therapy

Yesterday the kids' preschool had a free movie day at a local movie theater. We are on winter vacation this week (around here there are 2 post-Christmas vacations, 1 in February and 1 in April; it's great if you can afford to go to the Caribbean, not so great if you are trapped in 2 feet of snow with 3 small children) and as I am recovering from the flu from hell (why yes, that is the medical term for it) I thought it would be suitably mellow.

Boy, am I dumb.

The first problem was that Hot Guy was not going to be able to hang with ChunkMonkey as I had hoped. But I figured that if he fussed, I would just take him to the hallway because surely the older two would be settled with their friends.

Ha.

Lovebug started crying as soon as we entered the theater. He hated the curtains. He hated the seats (he has amazing recall. Once a theater chair sort of folded with him in it and he's never forgotten it. I don't know why he hates curtains.) He hated the dark - which hadn't even happened yet. He wanted to sit on my lap before I'd even gotten ChunkyMonkey settled and the stroller out of the way.

Oh, how Lovebug cried. I wanted to just leave, but that set Ironflower off. It was like Sophie's Choice, but with really low stakes.

Moms around me gave me sympathetic glances, but there wasn't much they could do. Eventually I moved us farther away from the curtains to a spot behind Lovebug's best friends.

Still there was wailing.

I believe I asked my son the horrible questions that I swore I would never utter: "Why can't you be normal and have fun like the other kids?"

This, you can imagine, did not immediately calm the boy. So I hugged him. I let him stand in front of me. And I prayed that Toy Story would do its magic.

God Bless Pixar.

The movie entranced Lovebug. . .hell, it entranced ChunkyMonkey.

Which is when I started coughing. Not throat-clearing little spasms, either. Great big hacking-oh-my-god-is-she-going-to-die coughs. I drank the baby's juice. I tried to take deep breaths. But I just couldn't stop until I basically coughed up the human equivalent of a fur ball. Luckily I had tissues. Not-so-luckily, my aim sucks and I had to use some of those tissues to clean off my poor sons' shirts.

Ironflower glanced at me in concern, but averted her gaze when she saw the crisis.

Again I was tempted to leave, but they were all so into the movie.

A little mucus never hurt anybody, right?

Good-bye, You Bitch

That's what my son said today, after I prompted him to say good-bye to a boy from Ironflower's class. The kids like to run around a bit after being picked up from preschool, because apparently freezing temperatures, a biting wind and snow on the ground are not half as important as playing with their classmates for an extra few minutes. Today I'd seen Lovebug argue with the boy, a nice kid from Ironflower's class. As it didn't get physical and no one came to me about it, I figured all was well.

Until, as we walked to our car with the boy and his mom, my son said, "Good-bye, you bitch." The look of shock on her face combined with the shock I felt made me giggle. I covered my mouth. I made him apologize. I repeated, "We don't call people that" like a mantra.

But of course, we do call people that. Not me, actually - my favorite word, as I've mentioned, is "shit." But my husband and possibly my brother-in-law prefer the term "bitch".  We just spent 10 days at my in-laws, a number of them snowed in. Add in the 3 days driving there and the 3 days driving home and well, we've had a lot of togetherness lately. (Yes, you read that correctly. Three days in the car back to the farm outside of Kansas City, 9 days in a house with no internet, and three days home.  And we're all more or less intact.)

None of which excuses the fact that we've been swearing in front of the children again. Well, in front of Lovebug. Ironflower doesn't seem to notice most of what we say (even when it's directed at her), but Lovebug is like a little sponge. A sponge that called a bigger boy a bitch in front of his mother.

I personally don't care much about swearing, which is good since that would make me a total hypocrite. But name-calling really disturbs me. Maybe it's because I can still remember being called names - that still echo in my head - as a child, but don't even notice most swear words anymore. The only reason I haven't hijacked all of Lovebug's Thomas trains is that I don't think he knew that he was name-calling.

But he'd better remember next time.

Stream of Semi-Consciousness

Ironflower threw up at school this morning. (Yes, she had school. Long story.) Anyway, I feel SO guilty. She said her tummy was upset, but I attributed it to her usual morning complaining (we are not a morning family) and her runny nose. Hot Guy took her to school, but he forgot her bag. And I forgot to remind him, because it's not like she really NEEDS the bag, right? She's never touched the spare outfit.

So not only did the poor kid puke, she had to wear too big borrowed clothes while Hot Guy went to pick her up.

Once again, we are totally the white trash family at the preschool. Feeling sorry for Ironflower led Hot Guy to stop by the movie store while getting stuff for dinner. (The way we're going, we should probably just give up and let them watch Nascar and wrestling and horror movies every night during dinner. But I digress.) And even though we normally eat dinner while watching a kid's movie only on a Friday night, we're doing it now. And we're watching Barbie and the Diamond Castle.

I'm actually kind of liking these Barbie movies. They have surprisingly good messages and music. Even Lovebug likes the music.

But, well, I'm liking this one for another reason. As it started, Hot Guy mentioned that the guitar playing friends reminded him of the Indigo Girls. Suddenly we started (in code the kids couldn't understand, of course) pointing out all the ways that Barbie and the Diamond Castle could, in fact, be a nice lesbian love story. Begcause whenever we talk in code around the children we totally regress, this has been amusing us greatly.

Try to keep that in mind if you're ever forced to watch the movie.Because it TOTALLY works.

And if you want a real lesbian love story, watch the movie Go Fish.