I had made a simple request that she brush her teeth, which she chose not to do the three times I made the request, the last of which included the alternative of me brushing her teeth for her and then sending her to bed without books.
That was on the heels of my daily battle to get her to walk up the stairs alongside me instead of me walking her up in my arms. It's not that I didn't want to carry her; I know there'll be a day I can't and will long for the days when I could. But I had bags to carry and I'm trying to wean her off of, well, me. I can't go to the bathroom without her either joining me or feeling like I'm abandoning her. "You need some privacy," she'll tell me as she enters the bathroom in my shadow and closes the door behind her. That's if she is able to keep up with me. When she can't and I close the door before she gets there, she cries. So when the news that I wouldn't be carrying her up the stairs got through to her, she cried her way up the stairs, holding my hand as a consolation.
That was just the topper of a day that just didn't live up to even a tenth of what I had hoped for it. I'm not naïve to think that everything that we do with and for the kids will go smoothly, them with smiles on their faces, fully engaged, entirely cooperative and genuinely happy; Dan and I relaxed, smiling and fully engaged ourselves. But I'm growing a little tired of virtually nothing being enjoyable.
I can't remember the last time we had fun as a family.
It seemed a perfect plan - we'd go to my nephew's birthday party near Rockford; and instead of making the hour and a half drive back in the dark, stay in a hotel room up there. We'd enjoy the excitement of staying in a hotel, spend some time in the pool and take in a museum. There was a natural history museum nearby that had a dinosaur exhibit - Cal likes dinosaurs.
It probably didn't help that my day followed a terrible night's sleep in the hotel bed. I slept with Cal. The poor kid has been battling a cold for a couple of weeks now and nearly hacked up a lung several times as he slept... next to me. Not surprisingly, he wasn't a still sleeper - he kicked me many times throughout the night.
First thing in the morning, my second shadow came looking for me. "Mommy..." Ella whined repeatedly as she shuffled her way to me from the bed she shared with Dan. Can I just catch a break? She crawled up next to and then over me to be only to be met by cranky Cal who proceeded to make it difficult for Ella to share the bed space with us.
So I left for Ella's spot next to Dan who was still half sleeping. I was foolishly acting as though I could catch another hour's worth of sleep knowing I wouldn't even get a minute's worth. Ella, of course, followed me, whining loudly still.
Instead of continuing everyone's suffering (Dan's, Cal's, mine, all of the hotel guests), I took Ella out of our room to get some breakfast. Cal and Dan could sleep, I could get some coffee and Ella would get her Mommy-Ella time that she apparently needed. Great.
Breakfast actually went pretty well. Ella actually ate her pineapple, cereal and yogurt. I got my coffee and some food as well. She made several trips to the breakfast bar for "paper towels" (napkins), the first after quite a bit of direction from me and "huhs?" from her, the others just muscle memory for her.
And then it happened - she announced that she had to go potty. Usually, she's telling the truth; so back to our room we headed, Ella demanding that I carry her, me insisting that she walk. Somehow we made it to about 10 rooms away from ours when she stopped and proceeded to do her combination whine-cry loudly. Great. This presented me with a dilemma - carry her, and she learns that she can beat me with incessant whine-crying; insist she walk, and she wakes up the entire second floor.
Without hesitating, I walked quickly to our door and pretended to go in, hiding behind a fortunately-placed bend in the wall right by our door. Right or wrong, mean or savvy, this approach - scaring her into thinking I was gone - usually works; and it worked on Sunday. She appeared in front of our door, still whine-crying, almost as soon as I had gotten there.
The struggle wasn't over, though - I had to help her go potty without the appearance of helping our headstrong, independent girl. This was impossible. With the first "No, I don't need help!" I left her alone in the bathroom. She came looking for me to help her immediately, and I responded with a direct, slightly angry "if you ask me to help you, you have to let me help you... it's not bad to let people help you." And she did.
Meanwhile, the boys were still giving the appearance of being asleep; so Ella and I headed back to the breakfast area where we were met by Dan and Cal maybe 5 minutes later and proceeded to have a loud, tense and contentious breakfast with them.
Why is it that our kids are so much louder than any others? We are always "those" people in restaurants... the ones with the loud, ungrateful kids... the ones hunched over the table as we respond constantly to our kids with pursed lips... the ones with the kids crawling under the table or staring - or, in Cal's case, growling - at the people eating next to us. Always. Virtually every time we go out to eat, we're leaving with Dan declaring, "we're not doing this again," meaning, we'll just stay at home to eat from that point on, a promise that we find is virtually impossible to keep.
Breakfast ended with the announcement that we'd get into our bathing suits and go swimming in the pool. The kids loved this idea and cooperated fully. Looking back, our experience in the pool probably wasn't as bad as it felt at the time. What I felt was the tension of battling Cal's continued apprehension with swimming in a pool despite his successes with weekly swimming lessons.
"Swim to me, Cal. It's the same distance as at swimming lessons," I'd say. It really was.
"No! I can't!" he'd respond, crying. "You come closer!" he'd insist. I never did. And he never swam to me.
In parallel, I was begging Ella to get into the pool, first to even put a foot in and eventually to jump in with me catching her. This is probably not an uncommon story. Every kid's afraid to jump in the pool for the first time. But by this time, I just needed something to go well.
All the while, Dan was sitting outside the pool in a chair, encouraging the kids from a distance, not getting in himself. Really? I mean, I guess I had it under control. But it's not like I wanted to be the one in the pool. My body isn't exactly bathing-suit worthy, nor am I one to spend much time in a pool. I don't swim, so it's kind of like taking a bath - I don't like baths. I was in there only for the kids... my loud, headstrong, apprehensive kids who say they like to go swimming but don't really play the part when it comes time to swim.
But Cal did eventually find a little swimming route in which he was comfortable. Staying in the 3-ish feet depth of water, he'd roll into the pool from a sitting position on the side and then kick and stroke his way across to the stairs, in all, maybe 10 feet across.
And Ella eventually did get the nerve to jump into my arms in the pool without first holding my hands, reached up toward her. In some cases, I even let her go under water. She was actually having fun in the pool, fun that was eventually negatively tainted by the struggle I had getting her to leave the pool. Of course.
Back in the room, we all showered and dressed, which, of course, involved Cal freaking out about his pants. They were the new ones that were "TOO LONG!!!" So I told him to just put on the ones he had worn yesterday. The kids yelled at each other, Dan and I packed and we all then headed out the door. It was time to see the dinosaurs. The kids were all about this plan, exclaiming, "we're going to see the dinosaurs!" We found the museum, open but not busy in the least. I think there was one other family there, which you wouldn't necessarily know given how quiet they were. Perfect.
We weren't in there 5 minutes, and Ella was insisting I carry her. "No, you can walk," I'd tell her. This wasn't what she wanted to hear, so she proceeded to try to beat me down again with incessant whining and crying and begging for me to pick her up and carry her. I didn't give in and proceeded to try to act as though she wasn't walking in my shadow, screaming for me to pick her up. I took pictures of Cal, fully engaged in the museum, in front of a few dinosaurs and a mammoth. I "read" the information in the various exhibits, most interestingly about Jane the T-Rex and Homer the Triceratops. I pretended that she wasn't screaming at me and asked her sweetly if she'd like to see the dinosaur or feel the fossil. She didn't. She just wanted me to carry her.Ella used the "I have to go potty!" tactic to get me to carry her once, and I had to respond to it. I unhappily dragged her to the bathroom where she proceeded to insist she didn't have to go. So I went and then old her, "If you have to go potty, go now because I'm not bringing you back here. Do you have to go potty?"
"No," she responded. Great. I knew we'd be back in the bathroom, making me a liar. I really felt like I was committed to not bringing Ella back to the bathroom and would have let her wet her pants before I'd do so. But it's not like I wouldn't have to cut our wonderful visit to the museum shorter than it would end up being anyway and clean her up. It was an empty threat that I shouldn't have made. Anyway, she was firm on not having to go potty, so I dragged her back out to the dinosaurs where Cal and Dan were waiting for us... I don't know why - it would have been more enjoyable for them to have gone ahead without us.
We returned to the bathroom maybe 5 minutes later.
After that Ella abandoned the insistence that I carry her and, instead, insisted I hold her hand as we walked the rest of the museum. Another compromise. This wasn't as sweet as it may sound - I rarely moved forward as quickly as Ella wanted to, and she always let me know it. "Mommy, come on!" she'd whine if I spent more than 5 seconds at an exhibit.
We were leaving the museum not more than an hour after we had gotten there. It was a short visit. This isn't unusual - Dan's not one to dilly dally... ever. Plus it was small and, well, one word: E-L-L-A. It was time to get something to eat for lunch anyway (great, another restaurant with the kids) and head home. By this time, I was having unfun. My happiness reserves had been depleted with all of the battles, big and small, that our hotel-museum treat had presented me. At this point, I didn't even want to have fun with my family. I had checked out. I was numb.
The thing is, this is typical. We are always battling and miserable. Maybe it's the kids' age. Maybe it's the plans. Maybe it's my expectations. Maybe kids Cal's and Ella's ages are like cats - throw them a wad of paper and a fancy toy, and they'll choose the wad of paper to play with every time. Maybe we just need to be sure we throw the kids different types of wads of paper for now and let them do with them what they will.
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