Yesterday was a pretty hectic day. It was one of those days when all three of my kids were their own storm system, and they were slowly coming together and creating the perfect storm, all pointed directly at me. It wasn’t just one thing that they were doing, they were just all over the map yesterday. It was just a bunch of little things that morphed into one big headache.
This is what started things off. My daughter ran up the stairs and was standing before me totally covered in sun screen lotion. Her arms, legs and her face were as white as a ghost and she very proudly looked at me, smiled and rang out:
[quote]TA DA! [/quote]
I just shook my head.
[quote]Daddy, there is a leeeetle bit of a mess downstairs, but it’s okay dad. It’s fine.[/quote]
So I stood up and start the descent downstairs into the playroom. What I found downstairs reminds me of something you might find at a crime scene. I felt like I needed to get a roll of caution tape and block off the entire area were I encountered the disaster.
Please proceed at your own risk. Sensitive viewers should escape now.
My blood was boiling, but yet, I couldn’t get angry with her. She knew I was upset, and without saying a word, she knew that if she ever did it again, she wouldn’t like me very much afterwards. I feel its important to let them know what is and isn’t acceptable without immediately going into throw down mode and scaring her into apologizing and feeling bad for what she had done, and so far it has always worked. But, she is getting to that age again where she likes to test me, to see how far she can push me, and she’s slowly learning that once my feet are placed firmly in the ground, I’m not easy to move.
The baby, well she just gets on my nerves because she’s constantly climbing on me like I’m a jungle gym. Normally it would be fine, but when I’m dealing with cleaning sun screen lotion off of my daughter, and she’s climbing on me, I start getting pretty frustrated.
My son, well, he’s at the age where he likes to give me some extra grief when I ask him to do a chore. I know that’s just par for the course, and something that I can get under control pretty easily, but yesterday – it really got under my skin.
Now, combine all that with the three errands I had to run yesterday to three separate stores, with the bickering between the three kids, the demands of food and snacks, and the stress of having to get the house clean and dinner ready before my wife got home. I was ready to explode.
I couldn’t even clean the house properly because every time I cleaned up the floor so I could sweep, the baby would immediately pull all the toys back all over the floor. So I gave up, I hedged my bets and took all the kids outside to play. If I hadn’t, the house would have been destroyed.
Now, when I take the kids into the drive way, they have a ton of toys they can play with. Barbie Jeeps, bikes, scooters, and tons of other random stuff, but they mostly just like to play with my tools. I figured they could keep themselves occupied for about an hour until their mother got home, while I worked on a project in an attempt to clear my head. Obviously, out of the 1 million toys they have to play with, they were bored with them and wanted to play in the hose. So I dragged the hose into the driveway and let them play with their water toys, most notably a Step 2 sink that they fill with water and climb into and pretend to take a bath.
Finally, I had about 10 minutes of peace when my daughter called me over with that ‘look at me’ tone in her voice.
I raised my head to see this:
[quote]Daddy, I’m a MUD MONSTER![/quote]
Okay, that WAS pretty funny.
My wife got home a bit later, and as she walked up to the house and I was sitting in my chair in the driveway, I kindly told her that I was in a horrible mood and if she said anything that I thought was demeaning to the way the house looked or that dinner wasn’t cooked, it would end in war. Well, it did end up in war, but it was pretty one sided.
I went inside with her and she just ‘t do anything right in my eyes and every look she gave me or anything she said I took it the wrong way. I was a jerk and I wasn’t exactly husband material at that point. I didn’t get too crazy, but I was arguing, mostly to myself because my wife is smart enough to know to just ignore me and let me act like an idiot to my own audience of myself. It wasn’t fair to her. She came home from a long day of working and the long commute home and the day ended with me causing the rest of her evening to be stressful and not very pleasant.
So, Mommy Fishkins, I’m very sorry for the way I acted towards you yesterday. I had a rough day and since I couldn’t really unload on the kids, I unloaded on you and I shouldn’t have. I could lie and say that It won’t happen again, but that would be a lie and I really don’t want to burst into flames when I walk into church this Sunday.
