Rough Day

Yesterday was a bad day.  We started with a morning of no one listening, and almost not making to school on time.  Then I took the twins to do errands.  There was fighting, screaming, tearing, throwing things, and general mayhem on the drive there.  I was not exactly looking forward to going into the stores, but since I had to drive a half hour to get there, I might as well.

I regretted it.

But it needed to be done.

I tried bribing the kids for good behavior with stuff from the dollar bins at Michaels.  As soon as we got into the car, the twins grabbed each other's special treats, and broke them.

I actually offered to give Annie to the cart guy at Costco.  She was refusing to come inside the store, stomping her feet and yelling.  I finally talked her into sitting in the cart, when Maddie (who had been sitting in the basket) climbed over into seat to sit by Annie.  Annie started screaming again.

When we finally got home, I heaved a huge sigh of relief.  I had driven over the speed limit trying to make it home faster.  If I had been pulled over, I would have referred the officer to the loud hooligans in the back seats.  "Please don't give me a ticket.  Can't you see I'm being punished enough?"

Elizabeth made it home, and fulfilled her job of adding to the general air of contention.  A half hour later, it was time to load up the girls to go get Emma from SEEK.  After 10 minutes of trying to get shoes and coats on, I loaded up two girls without coats and another who actually had both shoes and a coat on.  That's when the paperboy came up the drive asking about payment.

I don't pay the paperboy.  I take money to the newspaper office.  But my attitude as I tried to explain and load children in the car I'm afraid said- Leave me alone!

But that's what I wanted to say to everyone at that point.

I left the kids in the car when I walked inside the school to get Emma.  When I returned with Emma two minutes later, no one was still in their seat with their seat belt on (like I told them to), and two of the three were crying.

When we got home, I had about 5 minutes to fix Emma a sandwich before getting back into the car to take Emma to Activity Days.  I got to listen to the sweet sounds of three "very hungry" children whine about how ravenous they were.  You had snack exactly an hour ago.  Geez.  We would have dinner when we got back, and it would be more exciting that a peanut butter sandwich.

Anyway, when Ryan got home at about 7, I was a very grouchy mom.

Later as I was lying in bed, I was thinking about my day.  The desire to hog tie and gag my children had been very strong that day.  A blog post from a friend about her kids' pet gerbil eating her babies (which you can read about here) rolled through my frustrated mind.  All of a sudden, something clicked.  I bet that mom gerbil had just been tired of the kids pestering, poking, teasing, and fighting.  The baby who disappeared probably had just been bad one too many times.  Bam!  Problem gone.  The one who was missing an arm had ripped up his sibling's special, new book.  Ha!  Bet you won't do that again.

Maybe it's a good thing I am not a gerbil.  I don't really want to eat my offspring.