I've had the occasional good Mom moments, but they aren't nearly as entertaining as the "not so on top of my game" moments. Take the other day: the sliver is still in Mia's thumb. Mark is trying to remove it. All of his efforts to get even remotely near her with anything resembling a pair of tweezers is met with wailing, trembling, sobbing, gnashing of teeth, and sheer terror. Seriously, it's a sliver. After about 30 minutes (and did I mention this is all taking place at bedtime), I'm getting more than a little fed up, and here's what I come up with: "Fine. When your thumb gets infected and we have to take you to the doctor, I'm just going to tell the doctor to go ahead and cut your thumb off."
Amazingly, this does not go over well. More wailing, etc. At this point, I leave the room. Later I hear Mia asking Mark in a shaky voice, "Daddy, the doctor won't really cut my thumb off right?" I should start her a therapy fund.
In another incident, in an attempt to get at least 10 minutes to myself, I gave Sam the one toy that every child loves: a big cardboard box. Soon he is at my side incoherently begging for something. I ignore him. It turns out he wanted me to cut a door in the box, because he comes in a few minutes later with a pair of children's scissors and unsuccessfully attempts to cut the box himself. More whining. I still ignore him. Soon I realize it is a little too quiet and look up to find Sam trying to cut the box with the biggest butcher knife we own. Lesson learned. Time to child-proof the knife drawer.
3 comments:
I thought I was the only one that said things like that to my kids! Good to know we'll have a bunch of paranoid adult kids with all these strange ideas in their heads!
I laughed out loud when I read this post and then I immediately had to share these stories with John. These easily could have happened in our house. We better watch out when Zach and Sam get together--it will be scary.
Ah, the splinter. Cheer up. In 10 more years you will be an expert splinter remover just like me. You remember my triumph at your house a few weeks ago- 5 splinters in Nicki's foot that I thought it would be a good idea to try to remove while sitting on the couch in the middle of everyone who was TRYING to watch Tiger play golf. Finally it dawned on me that maybe her screams weren't contributing to the viewing experience, and I moved her to another room where she screamed even louder, so I don't think it really helped.
But, I did get those splinters out, although I have had to leave other splinters in before, usually with a comment about, "well, I guess if you won't let me take it out we'll leave it, but it'll get infected and hurt, but hey, it's your choice..." Which, you know, is almost as comforting as your great response!
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