Survivor

It’s that lovely time of year where people are starting to get out of dodge. It is frigid one moment or snowy and slushy the next. Either way, it’s miserable. And frankly the weather is just the least of it. I think I may need a vacation from my children.

Surprisingly Drew has been doing a little better. All it takes is the undivided attention of mom, two teachers and a social worker to get him to cooperate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m counting my blessings and happy that he is responsive. However, it urks me that the minute I take him out of a controlled environment, the bad behaviors come back. For example, his sports class that he loves. The poor coach spent the majority of the class disciplining, redirecting and keeping Drew on task. Fortunately for the coach, he only has to do this for forty-five minutes.

Then there’s my princess, the child that was supposed to make parenting feel easy. One of them was bound to make my job easy, right? Gabby has become insanely aggressive overnight. Sure there was the occasional hit here and there prior, but now she is slapping me around if something doesn’t go her way. She actually spent the vast majority of Drew’s sports class either terrorizing the center or beating up on another 18 month girl who has an older brother in Drew’s class. That same 18 month old spent the 45 minutes nicely by her mother’s side. She never in those 45 minutes felt compelled to beat up another child, as did mine, despite having an older brother. For that matter, her older brother never needed disciplining by the coach either. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG?!?!

Drew’s reward for having half way decent behavior at school has been to have some quiet time parked in front of the tv and then doing an activity with me. It’s been really good. Not the tv part, which I hate but need to find someway to get the kid to sit still and he’s pretty much given up on naps. The engagement between the two of us is really nice. We work on a puzzle, do an art project or play a game. I think it’s made a big difference for us to have the one on one time.

Gabby’s spending more time in the very nice health club day care. Although I think it’s important for her to have the socialization with other kids, I’m afraid its possible that it isn’t helping her desire to kick butt ninja style. But then again she has to kick butt ninja style just to survive in our house so I can’t imagine a couple health club kids could change that.

Well I guess I just need to come to grips that this is my life. I think I thought being a stay at home mom was going to be all glamour. And even when I thought about the less than glamorous parts, I don’t think I had any idea how not glamorous it would be. There’s a lot of heavy lifting involved. And when they don’t behave, it makes me feel like its a direct reflection on what I’m doing since I’m the one doing the heavy lifting. And what makes me qualified to do it? I think if I interviewed for this job, I may not have gotten it. But it’s mine and I’ll just keep working to refine these skills, because what other choice do I have. I’m completely without a doubt not acing it but I guess I’m surviving so that’s gotta count for something, right?