Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Not my proudest moment

I told my dearest friend this story and she said "that sounds like a blog post." Well, it's not my proudest moment and it's more about me than about my 2 baby dolls, but I'll share it anyway. I hope you enjoy it.

We met Matthew and "Enen" otherwise known as Helen, Matthew's Mommy, at the park on Sunday.

Well, let me back up. Chompers McLaughlin (otherwise known as Jackson) has been known to bite kids at school. We have NEVER seen him do it. Not at playdates, not at the park, never. But we seem to get a lot of notes sent home. One day, we got three. This is VERY upsetting to us, but we've been at a loss of what to do about it. I have always kindof hoped to catch him so that I could discipline him myself rather than allowing his only discipline to be the way they do it at school. Which consists of explaining that we don't hurt our friends and give them a hug. IT'S NOT WORKING!!

SO, back to the park. Jackson found a football and was playing with it for a long time. I just assumed that the kid must have left the ball there. Graham was being fussy because I was talking with friends while feeding him and not providing the most perfect serene environment in which to enjoy his bottle. My stress levels started to rise a little because of Graham's squirmy fussy bottle wrestling moves and then it happened.

A five year old boy (that I THINK goes to my church) said "that's my ball" and ran up to Jackson and took his ball back. And then, ball in hand, said "He bit me!"

A flood of emotions go through my head. I'm actually kindof happy that I finally get to address our biting issue and it wasn't one of his friends that I am friends with their mommies. (Is that bad?) I'm actually kindof happy that it was a big kid that didn't scream bloody murder and he really didn't hurt him. BUT I'm HORRIBLY embarrassed, I have a fussy infant that is half way through a bottle in my arms and my 2 year old is screaming. I apologize to the kid as I blow past him to get on to Jackson while holding Graham like a football. Graham is NOT happy about this whole situation. I get on to Jackson and make him give the football back to the kid (his dad made him give it to the screaming 2 year old while I was charging my way over there). I got on to Jackson and quickly decided that this was too much stress to handle. I buckled Graham in the car. I went to get Jackson, ATTEMPTED to get him to apologize to the kid and all I got was his look. It's the look that he does when he knows he's in trouble. He turns his chin away from me and rolls his eyes toward the sky, but rolls them down to peek at me every other second. LIKE HE CAN'T HEAR ME! Of course, he didn't say I'm sorry (he never has) and I'm TOTALLY mad and embarrassed. I load Jackson into the car kicking and screaming.

I decided that I'm just WAY to stressed to get on Hwy 31 so I attempt to navigate my way through the neighborhood to get home. Graham is crying in the backseat because he was only half way done with his bottle, and Jackson was crying because of the drama of the whole situation. I turned to look at a street sign to figure out where the heck I was and I NAILED a guy's mailbox. Took it clean off the post. I successfully didn't cuss in front of my screaming kids (an accomplishment in itself) and I turned into the next driveway to turn around and walk the walk of shame to the guys front door, mailbox in hand. A gawker was blocking my way out of backing out of the driveway to turn around and my blood pressure rose a little more. When he FINALLY decided to move out of my way, I backed out of the driveway and pulled back in front of the dreaded mailbox. I put my car in park, turned on my hazards, got out of my car and realized that another gawker was STILL sitting there staring at me through her driver's side mirror.

Here's my proud moment:

I aggressively charged her car, bowed up at her, and with my arms in the air yelled "WHAT?" She did the whole Oh God! She sees me! head duck and pulled away. Idiot.

I picked up the mailbox and dragged mself to his front door. I could hear Jackson yelling "DOOR" in the background because he wanted to go too. I rang the doorbell and no one answered. Relieved that I didn't have to admit my stupidity in person, I went back to my car and wrote him a note to call me and I'll buy him a new mailbox. As I was walking back up to his front door, he came out of the house and met me in the yard. I apologized profusely, and we talked for a while. He thought he could fix the mailbox and said he'd call me if he couldn't. Then he said that he was glad I stopped and that someone had hit his dog the day before and hadn't stopped. Then he informed me that the dog had died. Well that did it. I broke down and started to cry. I quickly excused myself as not to embarrass myself any more for the afternoon, and got into my car.

My stress climaxed while trying to get Jackson to tell Daddy what happened at the park and relaying the story of my afternoon and I sat at the table, fed Graham the rest of his bottle, had a good cry, and drank a big glass of wine.

Why does that make the whole day feel better?

No comments:

Post a Comment