Are we done yet?
This is the first full week that I’ve had Erik with me 24/7 for the summer. No camps, no playdates. Just mommy, Erik and Elsa all trying to keep it together.
I’m not keeping it together very well. I am not being the kind of mother I want to be.
What do I want to be?
Loving, patient, kind. Using words to solve problems, never violent or nasty. Allowing children to help with things (cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping) so they learn how to do them and are a part of the family. I want to act interested in the things they are interested in so they will talk to me when they are teenagers, even if that currently means listening to video game/pokemon/princess talk for an hour. I want to encourage learning and reading and figuring things out. I want to be a hard ass about them doing things themselves and solving their own problems, while always being available to help them figure out how to do it or lend support when it is a problem they can’t handle on their own.
What am I actually like?
Screamy, arm-grabby, and lecturey.
I do some things right. I listen to their never-ending talk about the latest kid thing that I don’t give two flying fips about. I make them problem solve. I have their back when someone causes trouble. I spend a lot of time letting them help me cook and clean and do other tasks that would be much quicker if I sent them on their merry way and did it myself.
But I have got to stop with the screaming. I scream because they are screaming. I scream for them to stop screaming. I scream because they will not. stop. making. noise. Wonderful example I’m setting, isn’t it?
Yesterday I completely lost it and did something I’ve never, ever done before. I started yelling “Shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up.” at Erik, which was awful and I still feel terrible about. I have never told either of my children to shut up. I have apologized several times and feel even worse because Erik says “I don’t care. Why would I care? People tell me to shut up all the time at school.” Breaks my heart!
So yeah. Summer is driving me bonkers. Why did I scream for him to shut up? Elsa got in “his” side of the van and he wouldn’t stop screaming about it. I am so over this “my side” thing. I know that is just what siblings do and I wouldn’t care if they talked about it, but the screaming sets my teeth on edge.
Erik has also developed this charming habit of making a scream like a dying robot* at random times. It makes me want to slap him across the face (for the record, I have never slapped my children nor will I ever slap my children).
I’m very sensitive to sounds and the yelling and screaming and random robot noises are pushing me over the edge.
It also doesn’t help that Erik is 7, the age of judgement. He thinks he’s the boss of everything and Elsa is only three, thus she can do nothing right. Of course she can’t do things like a grown-up does, or even like a 7 year old does. She can’t scoop out the cookie dough and line it up correctly. She can’t slice strawberries correctly. She can’t put puzzles together exactly right without doing a little testing. She’s THREE. She is learning and we must give her room to learn.
But he’s SEVEN and he doesn’t care. He’s a bleepity-bleepin’ drill sergeant and doesn’t care about gentle parenting. He’s not a parent and it’s not his job to care about such things, but it is also not his job to police every move made by his little sister. It is driving me in-freakin’-sane. I know it is pay-back, because I was exactly like that when I was a kid, but it has to end. I need him to chill.
______
Several hours later:
This afternoon was so much better! Probably because I threw away my “no screen time from 10 am-6 pm” rule and let them vegetate for much too long this afternoon. Later when I instituted DEAR** time, I pretended I didn’t notice when they banded against me and silently did a puzzle together instead of reading. I am sort of a control freak and have a hard time letting them purposefully do something that goes against something I’ve specifically instructed them to do (read a book), but I am trying very hard to get over that and view it as a positive that they were able to use their sibling bond to silently thwart me. Silence was the key, here, by the way. Sometimes I just need a little silence.
We went to my friend’s house for a BBQ yesterday and my friend made some Rosemary Ranch chicken, which Erik thought was totally delicious. He’s completely obsessed with this chicken. Today at the library one of my friends mentioned my chicken friend and Erik lit up “Did you say Amy? Chicken! Chicken! Let’s make chicken! Amy makes delicious chicken!”
Also, he’s in love with Amy even though she’s pregnant, and has two children and a husband. I’m sure that has something to do with his chicken love.
Our MOMS Club was doing our monthly picnic-in-the-park family night this evening and Erik was dying to take the delicious chicken, even though I didn’t want to go.
So guess what we did? Off to the store we went and we bought a gigantic amount of chicken thighs, rosemary and ranch dressing. Since this was Erik’s obsession, I made him mix the marinade, which he was quite happy to do. We then took the whole she-bang to the park and grilled it. I must admit, the chicken was totally amazing and Erik was floating away on cloud 9 since people were paying attention to him for his mad chicken making skillz. He is so in love with my friend, though, that he told her that her chicken will always be better than his. He is such a charmer (when he is not driving me crazy with the sibling rivalry).
I need to sit Mike down with a calendar and figure out when he can take some vacation days. He needs to bond with his children this summer too. I can’t be the only one bonding the hell out of these kids. I love Erik dearly and would do anything for him, but his personality is just a little “extra” and takes a lot of mental energy to keep up with. Plus, he totally loves me (which is great) and wants to be on top of me all. the. time (not so great). This has always been true, but when he’s at school seven hours a day I don’t notice it. I kind of liked having my body back. Elsa will jump on me and have fun, but she can also spend lots of time by herself, playing independently. We have our own groove during the school year and it has not been easy integrating Erik back into our days. Doesn’t that sound terrible? It is not meant to be a complaint about him, just a complaint about the general difficulty of having the structure of our days completely changed because of summer break.
Right now the majority of my friends are people who have young children. Irish Lad and his family are out of town most of the summer and Erik’s other pea-in-a-pod friend is in camp for most of the summer. That means Erik is not having a whole lot of fun when we go places because he doesn’t have anyone to run around with. I know it is not easy and I try to make sure he gets to play with his friends, but I can’t put our whole life on hold because he has joined us for the summer. We have places to go, people to see, things to do! We’re going swimming and splash parking and BBQing. Fun stuff, but not as fun as it could be if he had a kid his age along for the ride.
Six more weeks. We can do this! But can we do this with the TV and computer turned off for most of the day?
*If you are familiar with LEGO Star Wars you know the noise R2D2 makes.
**Drop Everything And Read