Trouble…it just follows our family. Truthfully it follows me. To the kitchen, the laundry room, the bathroom, the garage, outside, the store when I thought I was escaping childless to Target for “me time”, to our bedroom without knocking first and entering when I’m trying to change clothes, or crawls into bed with me and demands “Corn and Peg”(it’s a cartoon we’ve seen too much of and I’d prefer to go back to the days of him snorting from watching too much Peppa Pig). These Troubles demand breakfast and twenty minutes later a snack, and then the required question of “Mom, what’s for dinner?” Dude I haven’t made it through all the times you’re going to request snacks and drinks and candy, that you’re not getting because hello sugar rush I’m not prepared to deal with, much less figured out the daily what’s for dinner roulette, so can I please get two minutes to chug a Pepsi so my eyes will open and I can begin my day with the Nonstop List of Demands. “Mom, can I have a snack?” “You can have lunch.” “I just wanted a snack” and then a sulky Trouble #2 stomps up the stairs to his room where the door dramatically shuts and wails of “you hurt my feelings” can be loudly heard. Several minutes later Trouble #2 creeps back down the stairs to ask “Mom, can I play video games?” to which I tell him “No, you’re not staying in front of a screen all day.” Trouble #2 then marches upstairs with wails of “I want my Daddy, he’s nicer!” The neighbors I am sure whisper among themselves “well at least I’m not as bad as her, my kids like me.”
By the time we had traveled three and a half hours for a doctor appointment that lasted all of five minutes and another three and a half hours back yesterday asking me anything was probably going to get you a swift answer that would not be delivered by Mary Sunshine who also had a headache. Trouble #3 is a parrot, which is not compatible with my husband’s out loud comments to the drivers around him. Trouble #2 couldn’t control his mouth fully which was going 90mph nonstop. Trouble #1 thought everything was funny and his giggle box turned over and over and over again. My husband egged them on with fart jokes which made everything much louder and Trouble #2 repeated EVERYTHING multiple times and then some as if that somehow made it funnier. FYI- Trouble #2 is a carbon copy of his Daddy complete with smart aleck comebacks, both of whom regularly make me want to beat my head against the wall. I mean seriously, I get my husband sent off to work just to have one left here at home.
I had been trapped in a car with four boys, the only non-penis person in the bunch, so lots of toilet humor which of course my husband also had jokes about. Seriously, by the time my car door opened in our driveway and I started grabbing everything I could hold, I practically fell out of the door due to numb butt cheeks and legs that were asleep. My hair was coming loose in all directions and standing up from the thing that was supposed to hold it up. Arms full of water bottles, backpack, purse, other random items, and a look on my face that let the neighbor across the street know that I had just been to the parenting equivalent of one of Dante’s Circles. I’m pretty sure he thought better than to wave at me, not that I had a hand left to wave back with. The only things on my agenda were what can I make quick and easy for dinner and how fast can I put them to bed.
I end up feeling like a bad mom most days because I get irritable and snappy when my children have asked the same question for the ninth time in a row because they didn’t listen to the answer the first eight times, when at ages 12, 8, and 4 they run wild through the house like screaming banshees who have not a clue what an “indoor voice” is, when they fight and I make them separate only to find Trouble #2 back in his brother’s room not two minutes later and when I make him go back to his room there are dramatic sniffles of “but I just wanted to play with him.” “Kid, I just want to make it through the day without playing Who Did What and Who Is Lying, not having to issue bandaids, or clean blood off the carpet. Now go to your room and think about what you two just did.” “Mom, can I play video games?” Back down the steps I traipse to be met with Trouble #3’s list of demands. “CORN AND PEG! I watch Corn and Peg! I want Goldfish.” Enter Trouble #2 “Mom, I asked you a question. Can I play video games?” My husband comes home from work and he wonders how my day could have been so stressful that I need to grab my purse and promptly tell him “I’m running away” and go get a pedicure or aimlessly wander around Target, Kirkland’s, or Michaels before returning home a little more sane than when I left but still frayed around the edges. I hate that by the end of the day I am so ready to put my kids to bed. So here I am ready to start my day again and all I can hope for at the moment is “Can I drink my Pepsi first please?”
Decaffeinated In Texas,
Mother of Troubles
troublecomesinthrees.com 