Enriching activity goes horribly awry

First, a disclaimer: I had a really rough day today, and took appropriate pharmaceutical measures to calm myself this evening, so I'm in a rather chatty frame of blogging tonight. Try to hang in there. There's a funny story for you as a reward if you get to the end of the post.

Odd things have been happening lately. Occasionally I've found myself thinking, "I'm happy." Just fleeting moments here and there, but there nonetheless.

Other than last Saturday (which will come later in this post), I've been really handling Bubba very well. Better, even, than SuperDad, I think. I have actually been more patient with him than his father (at times). This has never really happened before. I've been coming up with "creative solutions" to Bubba issues that have actually helped (at times). For instance--and these sound like small things but to me they are some pretty major accomplishments--when Bubba wouldn't try his cream cheese and toast because he was wary of the cream cheese, I explained that it was "just like frosting." And he ate it, and liked it as I knew he would. I also managed to get half a grilled cheese sandwich down his gullet by using little cookie cutters and making his sandwich into a star and two hearts. When he had a meltdown because he couldn't take his Thomas train to daycare, I suggested he pick out a Thomas sticker and wear it to school on his shirt instead, and he was totally excited about it.

Best of all, last week I started using a motivational tool that just came to me like a bolt of lightning, although it sounds pretty obvious. Instead of trying to demand that he do things, like "Come over and get your shoes on, please" (I had to put the please in there because even when he's driving me nuts I'm usually pretty good about phrasing things politely--even if it comes out between my clenched teeth), I started saying "Can you show me what a good listener you are and come over and put your shoes on?" And his little face lit up and he did it, I praised the hell out of him, and the trick actually worked several times.

I'm actually having moments where I feel like I'm a good mother! As my therapist said last week when I told her about all this, let's take a moment to just realize what an accomplishment this is and feel good about myself.

Before you start gagging on the saccharin, here's the slimy underbelly of the week. A coworker (I've blogged about her before--formerly The Breastfeeder, now The Bragger, "Nigel's" mom) had told me there was a special storytime/movie/dogs for petting/crafts event for toddlers and preschoolers at the public library on Saturday morning. Since J. was working and Bubba and I were on our own, I thought hey, let's just do it. I'll do a fun, enriching activity with my child."

Saturday began promisingly. I had Bubba bathed by 9 a.m. and had managed to get some laundry and housework done without totally ignoring him. He was happy, and I figured the event would pump him up enough that he'd be able to push through for a half an hour past his naptime at 11:30 a.m. (at daycare he doesn't go down until noon and sometimes not until 2 p.m. or so at home, so I figured we were safe).

We got to the library on time, Bubba managed to wait in line for the room to open (I played Simon Says with him--another creative mother moment! Yeah, I was rockin' it.) We settled down, saw a couple people we knew, then the movie started and Bubba was rapt. A little more restless during the story, and then practically jumping out of his diaper to get to pet the dogs, but still well within the realm of decent behavior. Things started getting a little dicey toward the end so we skipped the craft stuff and went out to get our coats on. There we ran into Nigel and his mom, who asked if we'd like to go to the noodle place a couple blocks down for lunch. Great, I thought--Bubba and I will get some mac and cheese and he'll be all set for naptime.

As I stuffed my resistant toddler into his parka, Nigel stood in perfect obedience after his mother asked (one time, mind you), in her 'I'm teaching my child how to enunciate clearly' voice, "Can you stand like a statue and not move a muscle?" While she walked and alternatively carried her tiny toddler to the noodle place, I chased my hefty little guy until he refused to walk at all and then hauled his 35-pound body through subzero temperature, feeling every step in my lower back.

At the noodle place, Nigel sat down in front of his disposable placement and the supplementary cup of milk and peach his mother had brought, while my guy begged for a piece of Nigel's cookie and then ate it from the table sans protection (not a problem for me, but probably disgusting to Nigel's mummy). Then he decided he was done. He jumped off the chair and ran down the full length of the long hallway down to the bathroom area. I caught up with him and, still in the "I can handle this/patient-mother mode," I calmly brought him back to the table and resumed trying to bribe him into eating a single noodle, only to be met with "More cookie mease, more cookie mease, COOKIE MEASE!!! MEEEEEASE!!!!" until I just gave in and gave him the damn cookie, which he snarfed down at record pace.

Then, he jumped up again and took off down the hallway. At this point I told him he'd have to sit in a high chair if he couldn't sit at the table and he agreed, so I hauled him in one arm and the clunky wooden high chair in the other down the hallway to our table, removed his chair and finally got him settled in it.

I ate two bites of my macaroni before he began climbing out of the chair, getting his leg stuck with his knee up by his face, twisting and turning and whining. Meanwhile, Nigel is quietly enjoying his tortellini soup and watching my child as if he's a baboon at the zoo. Which he kinda was, really.

Finally it's time to go so I put Bubba down, put his coat on, then turn to grab mine and he takes off running. In spite of my attempts to navigate the crowded restaurant--not especially easy when you weigh 240 pounds--he is gone. This has never happened before. The panic stopped my heart just one second before Nigel's mom yelled to me that Bubba was over at our table again. He'd circled the room, dodging out of site behind a partial wall for part of the journey.

As soon as we left the restaurant, Bubba put his arms up and did the "uh, uh" that of course means "carry me." I tried to explain that I couldn't carry him, that he was too heavy, but of course ended up hefting him anyway. Then he started whining about something, I don't remember what it was exactly, but he kept it up until halfway back to the car when I put him down, physically unable to carry him one step further. I tried to explained that I was too tired, that he had to walk like a big boy. He crumpled to the ground and started wailing. I set him back up on his feet, at which point he dashed away from me and ran down an alley.

Here's where I really lost it. I did the arm-jerk. The horrifying arm-jerk that we've all seen in WalMart and that we've all sworn we'd never do. I jerked the arm, knelt down in front of him and in my sternest, most serious, mother-slightly-on-the-edge-and-one-step-from-insanity voice said "YOU DO NOT RUN AWAY FROM ME!" I grabbed his hand and basically dragged him back down the sidewalk. All the while, he is screaming "NO NO NO NO NO!" I finally picked him up but the screaming continued. I can't believe nobody stopped me to ask if I was kidnapping him; in fact, it's a little disturbing that nobody did.

Then I couldn't find the car, so we carried on this way through two different floors of the parking ramp. The entire morning got put into perspective when, after starting the ignition, I looked into the backseat and he was asleep already. Poor little guy, right?

I'd gotten him into his bed and almost out of his coat before he woke up, and then nothing but "Thomas train movie" would pacify him. In a cruel twist of fate, J. was half an hour late coming home from work. He bounced in the door, cheerily asking "How was the library?"

"It was a horrible nightmare!" I responded.
"Why?"
"Because our kid is an uncontrollable brat!" I said.
"What happened?"
"I don't even want to talk about it. I'm going to take a nap, take a shower, and leave." [I was going to LilCherie's for Girl's Night that evening.]

And that's exactly what I did. Thank god my hubby is willing and able to pick up the duty at times like this because I was fucking burned out.

My other bad motherhood moment for the week? It's short and sweet, unlike the story above. I was heading out to the porch to have a smoke and I had my cigarette and lighter in hand. J. was on Bubba duty but apparently was going to the bathroom or had gone into the other room for something. Bubba comes running up to me and wants to go out on the porch too. I tell him it's too cold, and then he grabs my cigarette out of my hand, runs away, and says "MINE!" Yep, that just warms the heart, doesn't it? Really makes you feel like you're setting a good example.

Obviously, it would be nice if I'd quit, but since that probably won't happen, I refuse to hide it. My mother hid it from us kids but we all knew from the billows of smoke that poured out of the bathroom and the occasional butt floating in the toilet. When I was younger I always felt uncomfortable about it because it was just something none of us ever talked about; we all just instinctively knew it was supposed to be a secret, and of course that's weird. As I got older, my friends would ask me why it smelled like smoke in our house and I always felt I had to cover for her and just pretend like I had no idea, and the whole thing was completely embarrassing. As a teenager I moved into occasionally sneaking one from the towel drawer. So my smoking habit, as disgusting and bad-exampley as it is, will not be a secret from Bubba for those reasons. I can only hope that he'll grow up to be one of those militant "my parents smoked so I hate it with a passion" kind of people (like Tingle).

To leave you on a high note, however, there was one shining moment of hilarity in the whole library debacle. In between movie and storytime, Bubba and I were sitting face-to-face on the carpet when all of a sudden he said "Arrrrr! Pirate!" and crooked his finger at me. He was a pirate for Halloween and you know how sometimes they just regurgitate this stuff with no obvious prompt, so I just did the "Uh huh," and kept looking around for people I knew to see what their kids looked like. With more urgency this time, Bubba said "Ma! Pirate! Arrrr!" and pointed to the area behind me. I looked behind me and saw a little girl, no more than a year older than Bubba, who had a cheery little blue and yellow, cartoon-laden eye patch on. I was simultaneously mortified and filled with the strong desire to laugh out loud. I contained myself, however, and explained, hopefully loudly enough for her mother to hear, "Oh no, Bubba, she's not a pirate. She has an owie on her eye and has to wear a Band-aid." It was pretty freakin' funny. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the story already. I can already tell it will be one that goes into the Bubba hall of fame. We'll be telling this one to his girlfriend at Thanksgiving in 20 years.