What a Long, Strange Journey It’s Been

So it has been over 2 years since my last post. Appropriately, my last post was about exhaustion.  That describes the last two years pretty accurately. To make a long story short, we were evicted last year after my husband’s great uncle passed away and his widow sold the property we were living on. (The new landlord wanted to change the area to house elderly tenants only.) As a result, we moved across the country from Arizona to Florida to stay with my in-laws. During that time, we also discovered I had glaucoma, and my bipolar had taken a turn for the worse. So I had a bit of a mental breakdown during our move, which was not particularly fun to be honest. I also injured my back and hip when I tripped over our dog that at the time insisted on being around my feet constantly, and that has started the early stages of Arthritis in my lower back as well. I was walking with a cane for quite awhile until physical therapy helped me to walk normal again, so most days I can do without the cane.

Now, I’ve been in Florida for about 9 months, and I have my medications for my Bipolar Disorder, anxiety, and OCD to just about a good point where I can manage to take care of the kids and myself. (Usually I neglect myself in favor of the kids being taken care of.) I am seeing a new ophthalmologist who is trying a new medication to keep my early signs of glaucoma to a minimum, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it works to delay any further damage. In the meantime, I still can’t see to the sides, and my eyes hurt constantly. Again, not fun.

The kids are in a great school, although my oldest is having issues concentrating, so that’s fun to try and work around. We’re working with a counselor to test for ADD to see if this is part of his problem. Hopefully I at least find some answers, considering he’s showing early signs of Bipolar Disorder as well.  The counselor he’s seeing is really good with him though, so that is a bonus. She seems to know how to appeal to his love of science to get him to open up and talk with her.

I know this post is a jumbled mess, and I will try to update more often, because damn I am so far behind. I had two drafts that I never finished, and now I don’t know if I will, but I will be updating about once a week with hopefully interesting posts for you about the fun times of dealing with a house full of kids.

Please go back to school…

I love my children. I really do. So it is with the sincerest love that I say this: Please go back to school, you’re driving me nuts. As I have stated before, any school breaks over 48 hours are hell at my house. After 48 hours my loving, adorable children suddenly turn into monsters that only want to argue and attempt to kill each other. It almost seems as though they simply cannot stand each other for anything longer than a weekend. I get it, close quarters, it’s cold outside, everyone is sick… It’s not fun. It’s even worse for me. The mother that gets to stay home with them and try to break up each and every fight they have. By the end of a week long break, the fights have erupted into the “he’s looking at me!” sort of stupid that makes me want to put them each in  a cage to separate them.

Right now, I am staying with my mother because I was helping her during her recovery from heart surgery. As a result, there is not only my children in the household, but my younger siblings as well. This makes for seven children under the age of ten. This doubles the amount of fighting, and whining, and coughing, and damnit please just go back to school already. Right now, we have had them out of school since the 21st of December, and they won’t go back to school until the 7th of January unless I can get moved out in this time frame. That was originally the plan, though. To move during the Christmas break so that way my children could transition in between semesters to a new school, which is slightly easier on them. Thanks to a funding issue (or lack of funding issue), the new house has not been finished enough for us to move in. Right now, the bathroom is a shell, and we sort of need the heat to be able to come on, because wow, it’s cold. Add in the fact that we have to drive from my mother’s house to the new one, and then work on it for a few hours and drive back because my husband still has to work nights, it adds to the stress of the situation. Now add in four bored children to this equation of renovation and a distinct lack of a babysitter.

At this point, I just want to curl up into a ball and go to sleep and wake up after the winter has passed and the kids are back in school. I find I have a better relationship with my children when I am not with them 24/7. I need a break from them, they need a break from me, and during school holidays, we simply don’t get that. Like I said, I love them, I just cannot mentally handle them in my face all day, every day. I’m already exhausted because of the renovating, AND being sick, so my temper is a bit short, and when they fight, I end up yelling at everyone and I don’t like doing that. I don’t like being the grumpy person that I become from the lack of sleep and lack of a break during the holidays. Supposedly the holidays are a happy time for other families. I am calling bullsh*t on this because everyone I know that has children is frazzled and stressed during this time of year, despite that happy holiday letter they may send out to all their friends and relatives. I have seen behind the scenes at family events. It’s not all happiness and glowy around the holidays, and I wish people would stop pretending it is so that those of us that are tired of pretending can stop feeling like Scrooge around this time of year. Here’s to hoping next year is better all around.

A Case of Blah

Yup, I’ve had a case of the blahs. For awhile before that, I had a case of the blarghs. I blame it on living in Arizona in the summer. Seriously, the electric company is laughing right now, because our electric bill more than doubled during the month of May. Yup, I paid $325 just to cool a home to 80 degrees. This wouldn’t be so bad if it was not 118 degrees in the shade on my back patio outside. (Note: I’m sorry mom for all the times I ever left the door open while I was growing up.) So this means my air conditioner needs to work extra hard to cool my house all because of a 30 degree difference between the outside temperature and the desired inside temperature. I’d prefer to have the house at 75, but hey, let’s not get greedy here.

Another reason for my “blah” feelings? My schedule is all sorts of messed up. The kids are out for the summer, and they are bored because they risk heat stroke playing outside. Since my husband’s job requires him to sleep during the day, they are now super bored because I need them to be quiet inside. They previously had a television in their room with a dvd player, because let’s face it, we all need a break from our children being under our feet from time to time. So… I put the television back in their room. This time, I put the X-Box 360 in there too. They can now watch Netflix, which I can still hear from the living room, but their father cannot hear it in the back room, and that’s what matters. The living room has surround sound, and makes the house rumble, and the sound echoes back to the master bedroom, so the kids would have to watch it with the volume extremely low, so they don’t get any fun out of that.

I know, I know… I am such a horrible parent. I put my kids in front of the TV. Oh noes! Someone call CPS, quick! *sigh* For those of you who didn’t catch that, that was sarcasm. Even if I cared what other people think, I wouldn’t be able to win anyways. My children are super skinny, so people assume I never let them eat, or sit in front of the television. Truth is, they eat waymore than I do to start with, and they are super active. Like right now? They are playing while they watch TV. They do go outside for about two hours a day at least, we go swimming to combat the heat outside, and they soak up some sun that helps them absorb vitamin D better. Yes, I use sunblock too. SPF 5o, thank you very much.

I know this all sounds defensive, but I am tired of moms bashing other moms because of their choices. My children eat healthy, balanced meals, they don’t drink soda, only juice and water, and they are active AND watch television and play games. Also, they take a multivitamin every day as well. So basically this is my way of saying, get off my ass. They are well fed, I spend time with them, I help them with homework, I read to them, I watch movies with them, I tell them they are loved, and they are clean. Isn’t that what matters?

This post originally started with me feeling meh, and blah, and I still feel meh, and blah, but hey, I took care of the kids’ boredom problem.

Ten Years Passes Too Fast

My husband with my oldest looking at the turtles at the zoo.

Today my oldest child turns ten years old. It took me by surprise when I was shopping for his gifts that I was now shopping for a ten year old. He’s not a baby anymore, and yet he’s not a teen yet either. He’s a sweetheart, and for the most part, he’s a good kid. He tries to help me around the house, even when his younger siblings are driving him crazy. I never had to deal with that. I was the youngest of three, although now  I am a middle child of six, but I moved out before I gained three new siblings. I have the most experience being the baby of the family. I have no advice to offer my son when he becomes frustrated with his siblings. My husband was the oldest. I think he understands our son more than he lets me know. They have a mutual frustration, a mutual burden of being the oldest. He has to be more responsible than his siblings, he has to be the first child we figure out what methods of parenting do and do not work. At times, it probably seems very unfair. I wish that I could make it fair. I wish I could make it better. Honestly, I am not sure how to help him though. He seems to be doing alright most of the time.

He wanted to go to the zoo for his birthday, but then he ended up opting to have a party at home when I told him he’d be able to invite friends from school to the party as well. Turns out he only had one friend to invite. This new school has not been a good one for him in the friend department. It seems kids out here are more judgmental to newcomers to the school. We’re so used to military schools. You get used to being the new kid in the military. Everyone is the new kid in military schools practically. Of course, that doesn’t make the process any easier. In the last ten years, we’ve moved fourteen times. That’s rough on anyone, especially kids that are in school. Granted, we’ve only moved five times since he started school, that’s still a lot, considering he’s only been in school five years. This past year he switched schools three times. I hated doing it to him, but things happen, you have to move. There are no ways around it.

I had started this post with the intention of being sappy, and I ended up in the realm of sad. I remember my first pregnancy. I was 16. Too young to have a child, but fiercely determined to prove I could do it. (Hopefully without mentally screwing him up in the process.) My family was skeptical, I know now they were just trying to protect me, but at the time I was angry. They didn’t believe that his father would stick around. (Ten years later, he’s still here. I doubt I could get rid of him to be honest.) The pregnancy was tough and exhausting, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I was put on bed rest for the last half of it, although my family made that nearly impossible. I felt so scared, and alone, and yet that only made me more determined to prove everyone wrong.

The delivery was hard as well. I love my family, but I wish things had been able to progress naturally, rather than everyone insisting to my doctors that I be induced because I was over my due date. I understand that it was tough for my mother to see me in pain, I hate seeing my own children in pain myself but sometimes pain is necessary. I spent five days in the hospital being induced, and after all that, he still became stuck and had to be suctioned out, leaving a bruise on the top of his head. Oddly enough, even through all the pain, as soon as they handed me my son, I cried out of joy because he was beautiful and perfect and I knew in that instant that I would die for him if I had to. All the pain no longer mattered, and in a way, I forgot the pain in that instant. (I’m convinced that the endorphins we get from child birth are what allow us to forget the pain and trick us into wanting more children later.) I can only hope to raise my son in a way that he becomes a productive member of society and that he doesn’t end up hating me in the process.

Work, Work.

Those of you that play World of Warcraft will probably understand that reference best, although it applies in this situation in many different ways. I may be a stay at home mom but I feel like I never stop working. Every day I get up, take a shower, get dressed, force the kids out of bed, and make them get dressed, feed them, and then get the boys off to school. After that, I have to clean up after breakfast, start some laundry, and straighten up the living room. I feed all the pets, and then open the house up before I start scrubbing the kitchen. Scrubbing the kitchen is a several times a day job if I don’t want bugs to show up and throw a party in my house. I have to do a daily walkthrough in the front yard to check for weeds and pull any that have popped up overnight. (I live in an HOA that sends us a notice anytime they notice a single weed. It’s pathetic.) After this comes dusting, picking up legos, trying to sort through boxes, (we’re still not completely unpacked from our move in December), and then I try to shuffle bills around.

My point here is that my day may not seem exhausting to other people, but it is exhausting to me. Part of the reason I am forced to clean everyday is what I call, space issues. Currently there are six of us crammed into a three bedroom house. We don’t have much storage space, and I have a total of two drawers in my kitchen for silverware and utensils. You can imagine how little cabinet space I have as well. So anytime I have to pull something out to use it, I end up making a mess of everything else around it. Thus, I am forced to reorganize things when I put items back. I have to put all of my groceries that do not go in the fridge, in the laundry room on the shelf. There are no grocery items in my cabinets except for my spices and they are fighting for space with my glasses. (I think the spices are winning.)

Where was I again? Oh yes, working. Constantly. If I cleaned 24/7 I might have a clean house all the time. And I definitely do try. I get mortified if someone shows up and I have laundry sitting on the couch, waiting to be folded. Yes, the laundry is clean but it’s just sitting there where I have ignored it for the last couple of hours while I busied myself with other things because I despise folding laundry and damnit now it’s all wrinkled and I’m rambling. Yep, I hate folding laundry. I can wash dishes all day. I can wash laundry all day. Just please, please don’t ask me to fold it. I have a perfectly legit reason for hating it, too. It feels weird. Like… the texture of the fabric on my hands feels weird. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll fold the laundry. I ignore it at first, hoping it will gain sentience and put itself away but unfortunately that has yet to happen. So, I’ll put on some Supernatural on Netflix, and then fold it without thinking about it as much as possible. The texture usually only feels weird on my hands if I was washing dishes and then I start folding the laundry. I think it has something to do with my hands getting prune-y in the dishwater.

Other than the laundry, the cleaning and organizing isn’t so bad. It just gets old after awhile. I feel as if that’s all I do, all day. As soon as the boys get home, I have to help with homework, and then fix dinner, and then get them in the shower, and off to bed and then I go back to cleaning cause it’s going to be awful in the morning if I don’t. It is the same routine every day with minor variations to the dance. One day the entire house will be dusty, so I have to dust, otherwise my allergies will get bad and so will D’s. (We’re the only two with asthma so far.) Another day, it will be a laundry day that somehow the laundry snuck up on me and hid somewhere so I had to spend all day folding the awful stuff. Or I have to wash everyone’s blankets and sheets because someone got sick, or it’s just time to clean them again, because people really should wash their sheets and blanket every once in awhile anyway.

Three Day Weekends are the Devil

I love my children. Really, I do but it seems that about 56 hours is about all my children can stand of each other. After about 2 ½ days they begin to wear on each other’s nerves to the point where they are trying to kill each other. After day 2 they decide to wage war that involves screaming, yelling, and frequent crying from my daughter that “my brother pinched me” or “my brother told me I couldn’t play with him.” With my headaches lately these screeches are interpreted by my brain as a sound that induces the desire to curl up into the fetal position hide in my closet.

Because of this fact that the sound induces pain so intensely, I have decided that 3 day weekends are the devil. Normally, back when my husband was in the military, any 3 day weekends and holidays involved him being home. Lately, since he works the swing shift of 2pm-10pm Friday – Tuesday, I end up spending most of the weekend with 4 children by myself. It seems when he is home, the children listen to him. I have stated before, and I will state again, I am not intimidating to my children. I could probably yell until blue in my face and they still would fight with each other the second I walk out of the room.

I don’t get much cleaning done on the weekends; I actually try to spend time with my children instead, aside from the headaches. Most of my cleaning is done during the week, while at least 3 of them are at school. When a 3 day weekend comes around, that is just one more day for housework to not get done. Most of the stuff that I do involves having to go into one of the rooms for an extended period of time to either clean or fold and put away laundry, which I cannot do with children underfoot. Which reminds me, can someone please remind me to organize my closet sometime this week? Ugh, feel like I need a maid sometimes, of course I would be absolutely mortified if anyone that I was not close to saw the mess that I hide behind the closet doors in my room. I spend most of my time cleaning the rest of the house on a daily basis. By the time I get to my own room, I am just tired. I definitely do not want to spend the rest of my evening cleaning my closet. I just want to go to bed or just sit down and read my email for awhile.

Anyways, back to my initial point of this post. Three day weekends are the devil. How do I know? They are frustrating and tiring and I just wish my children would go back to school already. When my boys are at school, they are in different classes, they eat lunch at different times, and they only see each other on the bus ride home. Which means, by the time they come home, they are excited to see each other and actually want to play together, which means they are less likely to be fighting and asking me to mediate which toy belongs to whom and this is a blessing. I love these moments when they come home from school, and I help explain homework, and they are getting along. I don’t know what it is about those magical two day weekends, but somehow three days are one day too many. This is how I know that three day weekends are the devil.

Easter

So while I sat here, filling plastic eggs with chocolate candies, I had a question that I had not given much thought to come to mind. “Why the heck do we hunt eggs on Easter?” I grew up in a Christian home, so we would always go to church on Easter Sunday all dressed up in clothes that were doomed to be stained with grass and chocolate by the end of the day. So I am familiar with Good Friday representing the day that Jesus died, and then Easter representing his resurrection. (Why they call it Good Friday is probably a whole other topic. I mean, who calls a day of death Good Friday?) So yes, I understand the celebration of the resurrection… But why are we hunting eggs? How the heck did the Easter Bunny come into being?

• Origins of Easter

To further my quest for knowledge I went online to an excellent source. (Google) ¬_¬ One of the first sites it brought up discussed the Origins of Easter Celebrations. So while it was on the About.com site, it did look somewhat promising as a starting point. So here goes. “The word Easter is named after Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring. A festival is held in her honor every year at the vernal equinox.” (Bellis). This article goes on to describe how the Easter Bunny came to be as well, or at least theories on the subject. “The Easter Bunny is a rabbit-spirit. Long ago, he was called the “Easter Hare”, hares and rabbits have frequent multiple births so they became a symbol of fertility. The custom of an Easter egg hunt began because children believed that hares laid eggs in the grass.” (Bellis). Well that would certainly explain a lot.

It seems that the symbol of eggs and event the name Easter all came from pagan religions long before Christianity borrowed it. Of course, Christians probably would never admit it, despite the name Easter never being mentioned in the Bible. Most Christians are probably just as clueless as I was as to the origins of the holiday customs anyway. It almost seems silly to take part in customs that you do not know about but like most holidays, I simply take part in them so my children aren’t left out. Funny how that works out, huh? I do plan on researching the origins further, so that way my children will be far more knowledgeable on the subject than I was but we will still have an Easter egg hunt at my house. I do know better than to hide the real eggs though, just in case no one finds them. (The smell would be awful before the month is over.)

• Easter Commercialization

I went out on Wednesday to pick up some Easter supplies. I waited until the last minute because if candy stays in my house for too long, I eat it. But I digress… While at the store I could not help but notice how much Easter has changed since I was a child. We would get an Easter basket with some decorated eggs, maybe a chocolate bunny, and possibly a kite or squirt gun to play with at the park. Now people put dolls, sports equipment, makeup, and even condoms in their child’s Easter basket. Yes, that last one was condoms. Yes, I have heard of it happening before. Honestly if your child is old enough for condoms, they really are too old for an Easter basket, but again I am getting off topic. It just seems that every year the baskets get bigger and bigger, and you have to try to place more expensive items in the basket in order to keep your children happy. Otherwise you get labeled as the “lame mom.”

I might end up the “lame mom” to some other people this year, because I picked up a bag of 70 plastic eggs, 2 small bags of chocolate to fill them with, and a couple boxes of peeps. I wandered around some more and found Matt standing in front of the pool section. Now I like pools. In fact, I love pools. Problem is, pools are expensive but I decided to join him and just browse anyway. Then, it happened. We found a perfect one for the kids. 18 inches tall, 8 feet across, and less than $20. I know that still sounds lame but we used to live in Hawaii, and my monsters would love to just sit and play in the shallow areas of the beach. That’s one of the main things they miss about Hawaii is that we could go swimming almost every weekend. I’d sit on the beach with my feet in the water while they played and we’d make a day out of it. So we bought it. C was with us, and she definitely cannot keep a secret, so we did not even bother trying. Heck she sang about getting a pool the entire way home. As soon as the boys walked in the door from school, she told them we had a pool. “We got a pool?!” Oh yes, I am still the cool mom. I don’t agree with the commercialization of Easter but I do know how it feels to be the only kid in class that isn’t celebrating a holiday. *coughHalloweencough* So, I know it sucks.

Works Cited

Bellis, M. (n.d.). The Origins of Easter Celebrations. Retrieved April 04, 2012, from About.com: http://inventors.about.com/od/estartinventions/a/easter.htm

Homework Battles

The amount of time it takes my children to do their homework, you would think that they were in high school or college. They get home from school at 4pm, and then they get a snack while they work on their homework at the table. At 5pm, I need to start dinner, and they are still working on their homework. For reference, I have a third grader, a first grader, and a kindergartener. Their homework is far from hard.

E, my second son who is in first grade fights me tooth and nail and sometimes I swear he just isn’t paying attention. He can read very well for his age, but he constantly comes up to me, “what does this say?” So I have to stop what I am doing and direct him to read it aloud. He reads the entire sentence, and somehow, the instructions still are not sinking in. So I have to ask him again, “what is it telling you to do?” He stares at me blankly for a moment and I can see the exact moment the light bulb clicks on. “Oh!” and he rushes off to complete that sentence. (He has to choose the correct word for each sentence and only has two words to choose from per sentence. Simple stuff he does in class.) Less than a minute later, he is walking back up to me, “what does this say?” I glance at the paper in his hand, and realize he wants me to explain the instructions for the next sentence, which are the same as before. So, I try my best to patiently explain that the same instructions apply for the whole page. He nods and sits back down. About 4 minutes later he walks back up to me. “How do I do this one?” I look at the page where he has correctly filled out the rest of the page and he is on the last sentence. I stare at him, trying to decide if maybe the last house we lived in had lead paint or something.

I know that sounds harsh and I feel bad for even thinking it but he is an incredibly bright boy. I do not know why he has such a hard time remembering what he was doing for his homework. His teacher has spoken to me and says that the only problems he has in class are with raising his hand to speak and sometimes he gets out of his chair and just walks up to her when he needs something. This is frustrating, especially when he KNOWS the rules in class, it’s like he momentarily forgets them.

D, my oldest on the other hand wants to convince me that his homework is too hard. So I explain it to him, practically giving him the answer to at least the first math question, and then he understands it. After that, he’ll brag that his homework is “so easy.” Tell me this, child, if it’s so easy, why does it take you 2 hours to do your homework?? He understands math concepts pretty quickly, but he easily gives up before trying if the math problem even looks hard.

They all get a weekly packet that they work on all week, and then turn it in at the end of the week. V, my third son is the only one who will quickly do his entire packet for the week on Monday, so that way he can play quicker the rest of the week. Sure, his homework might seem easier to his brothers, considering he is kindergarten, but the homework is grade appropriate. I just don’t understand why I have to fight them every single day to do their homework. I have tried incentives like extra TV time, or extra trampoline time but currently nothing is working. Anyone else have these issues?

To Spank or Not To Spank

Ooh a hot topic that generally divides people. My post yesterday had me thinking about bratty children. Exactly how do they get that way? Is it because they weren’t spanked? Is it because they were? No one knows for sure what sort of discipline is best because surprise, surprise, every child is different. In that same thought, this means that every parent is different, and that lends credence to the idea of “what works for one parent, does not always work for the other.” My husband, Matt can give our children a look from across a room, and they will straighten up and behave as if someone was standing right there telling them to behave. I do not know where this mystical power comes from but I wish I had some of it.

My children do not take me seriously most of the time. I could yell until I was blue in the face and they would turn around and start fighting with each other the second I turn my back or walk out of the room. It’s like they think I can’t hear them or something. I’ve spanked my children before. It doesn’t work on them. They seem to have forgotten the punishment as soon as it is over. Sending my four year old daughter, (I need to think up nicknames for them online soon), to the corner still has the devastating effect on her that causes her to straighten up pretty quickly. To her, the corner is like being sent into solitary confinement, and from the way she cries in the corner, you’d swear I was torturing her. My three boys? Not so much. The corner is like a vacation for them. So time out doesn’t work, and spanking doesn’t work, so I had to search for something that would, otherwise I was going to lose my mind.

(On a side note: Before you tell me I’m not spanking hard enough, consider what you are about to say to me. You have no idea how hard I am hitting to begin with, and if I was indeed spanking them pretty hard, you’re suggesting child abuse. There is a fine line between discipline and abuse, and I refuse to cross it. We are meant to protect our children, even from ourselves. )

Silhouette of the front leaning rest.

For ideas on the boys, I turned to Matt’s military career. I watched how much the threat of pushups and the front leaning rest would cause adults that had a problem with authority to shape up and do what they were instructed to do. (Front leaning rest is the pushup position, but you maintain the up position rather than up and down.) So I decided to try it. I can tell you two things. One, my children do not have to be disciplined for very long before they decide they do not want to be subjected to this form of punishment again for awhile, and two, they will either be stronger or smarter at the end of it. My oldest is almost 10. After just a few minutes of the front leaning rest, he is apologizing for misbehaving, and his younger brothers both crack even faster.

The best part about all of this? I do not have to lay a hand on them. So, I am not hurting them by spanking and losing my cool, and the time they spend down there allows my frustration levels to go down enough to talk to them without being angry. This part was the most important part for me. I am bipolar, and I tend to lose my cool, especially after a long, tiring day. I had to realize that when I was so angry that I could not think straight, they were in charge. So I had to take back control. Also, I will not hesitate to punish them in front of their friends. This allows me to address the problem quickly without hurting them physically.

Now I am not saying that people shouldn’t spank, and I am not saying that they should. I am merely relaying what works for me, and offering it as an option if what a parent is currently doing just simply is not working. Most people do not want to discuss discipline with their child’s doctor for fear of being called a bad parent, and who wants to admit if they are losing their cool to a six year old?

Taking Children to the Store

Taking children to the store is like playing Russian roulette with your sanity. I was blessed with relatively well behaved children but they are in fact, children. They get bored, they pick at each other, and they fight like you would expect children to do when they are bored and/or tired. Now if my husband is around, then the experience is not too bad. That means that between the two of us, we only have to deal with two children at a time. I can send him off to wander the store with two of our children, while I take the other two. We usually split them up by whoever is fighting that day. If my oldest two are fighting, I’ll send him with the first and third child, or the second and fourth. This splits them up nicely so that the two I have aren’t fighting, and the two he has aren’t fighting.

Unfortunately, there are times when my husband is unable to be with me in the store. These are the times when my children who are normally angels turn into demon spawn. It starts out quietly, and I can usually tell it is going to be one of those days. I’m standing in the aisle looking at groceries when I hear giggling behind me. That’s how it starts. You’d think giggling would mean that they were being nice to each other. You’d be wrong. What started as harmless teasing or picking at each other quickly turns into them pinching one another and crying. Which then forces me to separate them but how the heck can you separate four children without taking up the whole aisle? Mostly I make them stand with their hands behind their back and they follow me in single file. Anyone who has ever had anything to do with military immediately notices my children are standing in parade rest around the store.

After awhile of this, I’ll start to feel bad if we are taking too long in the store, so I’ll try to make staying in line fun. I’ll call them my ducklings, which by now, you’d think I’d realize this is a mistake, but I do it anyway. This will start the giggling again but at least this time they aren’t picking on each other, and most of the noise I have to deal with is a bunch of quacking and giggling behind me. At least I know where they are, right?

Now I’ll be the first to admit. This is tame compared to most of the children I see in the store. That ear piercing scream that comes from a child that you would swear is making your ears bleed and your ovaries wither and die. I actually ran into one in Ross once that was so bad, I could not hold in my comments anymore. I actually said this out loud. “Well I’m glad my uterus is already gone, because if it wasn’t it probably would have ran away just now, and I think my ovaries just died.” The other moms in the store gave me dirty looks. Now, let me explain this child, so that you can get a better picture of why I said what I did. This child was probably about five or six. Definitely old enough to be walking on his own but he was lying down in the basket of the cart, kicking the sides, screaming at the top of his lungs and cussing his mother out so loud I think the people in the next town could hear it. (It was Hawaii; the towns were pretty close together.) I actually felt sorry for the mother for a few moments before I decided that this child had probably learned this attitude from home. He was yelling “I hate you, I’m going to kill you, I hate you bitch!” while kicking the cart and throwing items out. No surprise, the mom left the store without purchasing her items because of the embarrassment. Of course, she took her time doing so, and everyone in this tiny store had to listen to this child scream for about 15-20 minutes before she finally left.

What I am still wondering though, is how does a child get to that point? Where is this behavior learned? I mean, children do not generally learn about hate and killing people unless they hear it at home, and this sort of behavior has to have gotten him what he wanted in the past, as most children do not suddenly start tantrums of that scale at that age. It generally starts much earlier than that. It’s just… how do you let it get that bad?