Looking up

Last night, at Rosie’s, Aerin got her foot caught in her chair.

“Hep me! Hep me! My foo! Hep my foo tuck!”

I immediately unhooked her foot where she’d gotten it wedged between the bars, and she went back to eating.

“She told us!” I said to Todd. “She didn’t scream. She didn’t come unglued. She TOLD us!”

This is a huge turning point. Only a few weeks ago, getting her foot caught would have escalated into an all-out screaming fit faster than we could figure out what was wrong. When the girl is happy, everyone in the room knows; she is LOUD in her happiness. When she is hurt or angry, everyone within a five-block radius hears about it.

Things have been difficult with Aerin, that’s no secret. Some days it seems like we butt heads every five minutes, and the constant conflict has been so incredibly draining. Her temper, her stubbornness, and her sheer volatility are more than a match for me, and I admit I am not the best mother for a child like her. She needs someone with an even temper, the patience of a saint, considerable free time, and maybe more than a touch of hearing loss, NONE OF WHICH I HAVE. (Although give her another few months, and she’ll take care of the hearing loss.)

Last night, when she told us, clearly, what was wrong and what she needed, it was like the sun peeking out after months of storms. “Oh my god,” I thought, “we might have an actual human being here.” Suddenly, I feel like we might make it. It’s not over, these hard times, but maybe, just maybe, it’s about to get a little better.

Summer so far

Visiting splash pads

Picking strawberries

Splashing at home

Traveling to visit family

Being superheros in Target

Reading books until we fall asleep

Slip n slides for grownups (and kids)

Getting new haircuts

Getting kissed

Fourth of July fun

And the occasional botched jump into the pool

Monday couldn't come soon enough

I can make it sound like our weekend was a good one. A morning spent at the Botanical Garden. Playing outside with the hose. Cinnamon rolls for breakfast. Watching fish at the pet store. Friends coming over to play. Jumping up from dinner and running outside to see a beautiful rainbow. All these things actually happened and it makes it sound like we lived the kind of weekend you might see on Pinterest.

In reality, let me just say that no parenting awards were earned this weekend.

Todd decided late Friday night (after a less-than-encouraging update) that he’d go back to Tallassee on Saturday to visit his sick grandmother. I already had plans that we were all going back to the Botanical Garden Saturday morning, but I encouraged him to go. What I disagreed with was taking the kids. I have very strong feelings on taking small children on long road trips just to visit unresponsive people, and by "visit" I mean look at the person, get freaked out, and try to eat goldfish off the hospital floor “oh my god put that down NO SPIT IT OUT NOW.” I convinced Todd to leave me with both children and make the 7-hour round trip by himself. (And since he got stuck in a massive traffic jam on the way back, that was the best decision for him ever.)

So there I was. Outnumbered, with two children who were, for various reasons, being total assholes.  In a house that had passed “messy” about four days before and advanced to “nightmarish and definitely unsanitary.” It was bad.

I tried. I really did. And things were good that morning! Jessica met us at the Garden and helped me wrangle both kids. We saw butterflies, touched turtles, splashed in water, played in a giant sandbox, and generally had a good time. And with Jessica’s help, I didn’t lose Aerin even once.

No, it was lunchtime where everything went downhill. And stayed there. And kept digging.

Lately, I’ve tried to eliminate shouting from my discipline techniques. I prefer things like time out, or taking toys, or dumping a tantruming toddler directly into the baby cage crib and shutting the door, really ANYTHING other than yelling. But ooooooh did I do a lot of shouting this weekend. Also, shrieking, angry sputtering, and death glares.

Like when I discovered Micah using my camera bag (and the SLR, lenses, and video camera in it) as a stool. The only words my brain could formulate were, “GO AWAY. BE SOMEWHERE ELSE. NOW.”  I’m not sure it was intelligible, what with the gritted teeth and all, but he took off and was quiet for a whole five minutes, so I guess the meaning was clear.

Or like when Aerin spent a solid hour whining at me and yelling at her brother, and I finally just gave up.  I ordered pizza, took her room and put her in her crib, went back outside, told Micah to enjoy playing in the hose but not to talk to me, and surfed the web on my phone from the back of my truck until Dominos showed up 30 minutes later.

By the end of the weekend, we were all just DONE with each other. No one liked anyone anymore.

On the upside, I didn’t beat anyone, the house was eventually cleaned, and the children were only a bit neglected. If I couldn’t be nice, at least I didn’t do any lasting harm, I guess.

I forgot to mention...

Micah graduated from Pre-K on May 17th. Next year, he officially starts Kindergarten.

What not to say

After the EF-4 tornado hit Harvest on April 27, 2011, there was a house on Stovall Road where the survivors erected a hand-painted sign with the words, "GOD SAVED 6 PEOPLE HERE." It sat across the road from where a man died.

It's been two years, and that sign and its implications haven't stopped bothering me.  At the time, I wondered what the family of the man who died made of it.

Personally, I'm pretty sure God had nothing to with anything that happened that day. Some people were just in the right place, others were in the wrong place, and it was all horribly arbitrary. If I had to go further, I'd say that geography, wind patterns, home selection, home construction, the National Weather Service, and probability did most of the saving that day. Regardless, there is never a situation where, "nah, God just likes me more than that 6-year-old crushed by her house," is an appropriate response.  Even if you truly believe the dead would have been saved too if they'd prayed harder or gone to church more or "just listened to the Lord" when they bought their house or left work that day or whatever, it's just not something you say out loud.

Every time a disaster comes around, I just want to tell people, look, if  you think God reached out His hands and saved you, fine. But if you feel compelled to say it....don't.  Just don't.  Especially not while they're still uncovering the bodies of children.  If you have to say anything, stick to "I was lucky."