Someday, long from now, when I’m well rested, and these days are far behind me, I may laugh at days like today. But, today, there is no laughing. It was a terrible, terrible, very bad day. A Top Ten ‘I-Must-Be-The-Worst-Mother-In-The-World’ Day. An “oh dear God how are we ever going to get through this?” day. A “someday maybe we’ll laugh at this, but right now it is hard not to cry” day. The boys were in rare form. They are wild (always), they are rambunctious (always), they are challenging (always), they are the most ‘energetic’ kids around (always), they are full-of-it (always), but they usually are not bad. They are good boys with insane amounts of energy. But they aren’t (usually) bad boys. Today they were bad boys. Excuse me (I’ll try to rephrase that…), they had bad behavior. Very bad behavior. It started from the moment they woke up. They were all over each other, throwing tantrums left and right, fidgety and agitated. Nothing went right. I’ll skip over all the gory details and just get straight to the horrible climax.
Our plan was to meet up with our good friends the Kulps for a playdate at Jungle Fun. From the second they saw Joy Lin the boys were crazed. Competing for her attention and affection; off-the-wall-wild; disobedient and –it seemed– determined to see how far they could push us (us = their parents). They hadn’t seen Joy in a while, so it is understandable that they were excited, but they could not contain their excitement… which was a problem. And then it got bad. Owen got a Time Out (sitting on the bench at Jungle Fun) for pulling a girl’s hair. I was mortified that he’d do that (pull her ponytail to the point that she cried), made him apologize to her, the whole nine yards. We should have left right then. Because it got worse. The manager of Jungle Fun came up to me to tell me that Kyle had bit — yes, BIT — a girl. We found her, crying with her mother, with an ice pack on her back. The bite was not bad, and admittedly, the girl was milking it for all it was worth, but still… it was a bite. A BITE from my 4 1/2 year old son. A bite from my child who hasn’t bitten anyone (other than his brother) since he was about 18 months old. I was horrified. Beyond horrified. Kyle cried hysterically as he said sorry to the girl and her family. He sobbed, “I need to kiss the owie for her to feel better” but the girl (understandably) turned down his offer. I apologized up and down to the mother — who let it be known that she was (understandably) not pleased. And then I gathered the boys up faster than I ever have, apologized to the Kulps for having to leave early, and I marched the five of us out of there about as quickly as humanly possible (with Kyle crying hysterically the entire way). It was a scene. And the thing is, our family — just being the unusual combo that we are — is always a scene (which just makes the whole thing feel somehow worse…)… but this, this was a different and completely embarrassing (humiliating!!!) scene.
The boys were told, on the ride home, that we would NEVER, ever, for the rest of their lives take them to Jungle Fun ever again. And we mean it. And they know we mean it.
Just as peace was starting to set in back at home, I did a very stupid thing. I let Meera hold a peanut (like, in the shell). She somehow bit off a tiny piece, which got lodged in her throat, and she began to choke. Braydon had to perform choking-infant-back-thrusts to try to dislodge it. She was o.k., but it took her almost an entire hour to recover. During that hour she was crying, lethargic, and just generally pathetic. Once she was really o.k. (I got Owen to play around with her to get her to laugh… which he did… and she ‘came to’ and was back to her happy normal self), I cried hard. Sitting at the dinner table, looking at my three precious ones, with tears springing out of my eyes, all I could think was “OH MY GOD, THEY DRIVE ME CRAZY, BUT WHAT WOULD I EVER DO IF SOMETHING HAPPENED TO ANY ONE OF THEM?” Braydon hugged me and told me that my baby is fine and that my boys are going to be o.k. I have to have faith that he is right. And I have to believe that someday I’ll be laughing. But today was a (bad) day to remember.