Tonight, while watching ‘House Hunters International’ (my new favorite show), my youngest daughter looked up at me with serious blue eyes:

“Momma”

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out!”

“Momma…”

“That’s my name, do-”

“MOMMA!!!!”

“What!?!!?!”

(sigh) “Momma, ”

(I bite my tongue)

“…what if you said or did something bad, wouldn’t it be great if you could rewind and start over?”

Well, YEAH!  Like today, I would rewind back to before I got cranky and started hollering, or threatened spankings in the bathroom of the restaurant where we had breakfast, or the altercations when we got into at the aquarium, and the nagging that started when my older daughter had an asthma attack (“you shouldn’t have been running around so much!!”), or the hollering (due to crazy, hyper children and thus a spilled root beer) that commenced again once we returned home. 

I would ab-so-TOOT-ly rewind today.

In fact, I would rewind a lot of my life as I never seem to do or say the right thing the first time around.  My five year old is apparently much wiser than I.

If you had ‘do-overs’, what would they be?

When I was a child,  back when dinosaurs drove carpools, I remember crying in class once because Billy Powell cheated at a board game.  I had been waiting for weeks to have ‘activity time’ and then when I finally achieved it, my opponent, all 72 pounds of him, stole the playing pieces, threw them on the floor, then went off in search of another child to harangue.  I remember other girls crying and they always seemed so fragile, everyone wanted to take care of them.  When I cried, drat that Billy, I didn’t have a crowd of people surrounding me making soothing noises.   I just  remember nervous looks at my inflamed cheeks, matching red eyes and snotty, grossly-leaking nose.  I also remember ears being plugged and the teacher rolling her eyes.  I wasn’t, and have never been a ‘pretty’ cry-er.  Some people are good at that, I’m sure you know a few; They avoid final exams, speeding tickets, pick up men right-and-left all with a dainty sniff and glistening tear.  I obviously didn’t have the knack.

After that 1st grade embarrassment I vowed, a la Scarlett O’Hara, to nevah-evah-evah cry in public again.  And I didn’t, until I had kids.

For some reason being pregnant kicked the crying gene into overdrive.  I cry at news stories (the happy ones), smarmy card company commercials, obituaries of 98-year-olds, kids who don’t eat their dinner, shoe marks on the linoleum, a child’s painting: You name it, I’m boo-hoo’ing.  Today as I headed home through molasses-thick traffic I saw a middle-school kid almost get hit by a car.  He didn’t, however, and safely continued his slow jaunt across the street while glaring at the restless drivers. Even though he was safe, I imagined a worse ending and actually cried about it the rest of the way home.

I cry when I get a phone call or email from my son, and then I cry if I don’t hear from him for more than 48 hours. I cry when my daughters behave horribly, and then I cry even more when my youngest offers to load the dishwasher.  I cried at work recently when I had a rotten day and at that moment I realized I had a problem.  I’d be better off shooting myself than crying at work.  It shows weakness, which in a male-dominated field (are techno-geeks male?), weakness is an Achilles heel. 

I either have to cut out this crying crap, or start applying for tissue commercials.  Uh-oh, my daughter just gave her sister a hug. 

I’m screwed.

Eva, my youngest, has been unusually irritating, exasperating, rude and just plain tiring lately.  I think it started around Thanksgiving, so I blame the holidays.  However, it’s now the middle of January and that excuse is wearing thin.

This morning she screamed at me because I took the lid off of her yogurt and I hadn’t asked her permission.  She makes these high-pitched squeals that annoy dogs within a square-mile radius, and when I ask her to stop, she has to do it AT LEAST two more times.  She fights with her sister, constantly. (“NOOOOO ANN-KA!!!” is her favorite sentence).  When I threaten her with time-outs or no privileges, she laughs about it.  She has taken to hitting people when she doesn’t get her way.  I have to constantly apologize to our part-time nanny about her behavior and have started a calendar of ‘good days’ towards books as a reward.  So far, she’s had 2 good days out of 5.  Those aren’t very good odds. 

I’ve started to threaten to send her to boarding school and NOT visit (if only I could afford boarding school). 

Then, occasionally, she can’t be without me.  She’ll smother me with kisses and hugs, write letters (sounding out the words so well that I think that her older sister wrote it!), or draw pictures of us standing in a sunlit field of daisies, just smiling our brains out.  She’ll ask me silly questions like ‘why do frogs have such long tongues?’  She’ll impersonate a foreigner with a lisp and do a strange uber-russian dance, making us all laugh.  I have a protective heart over her, as she’s my youngest and most sensitive, so that whenever anyone corrects her or complains about her actions (quite often) I’m the first to rush to her defense. 

I just can’t figure out how to be a good mother to her.   There are a lot worse mothers out there, I’m sure, but that doesn’t make me feel better.  Some days I actually can count  to 100 before losing my cool.  Then there are those days where I find myself in a fetal position, sobbing, and sorely wishing this misery to end (graduation date: 2022!).  Thankfully her father took her to work with him today, I can breathe a sigh of relief.  Then I feel guilty for feeling this way.

There’s no fun twist to this blog.  Perhaps there will be a happy ending in the years ahead, but right now it’s hard to see the sunlight through the clouds.

What is it with kids acting up in public places?  They must know that I cannot come completely unhinged while dozens of witnesses look on, so every time we’re in a public place they embarrass the hell out of me.  I’ve made a short list of my no-fly zones of public places accompanied by children (like it’s possible to go somewhere without them, but I can dream):

Grocery Stores:  Where do I even begin?  They whine about being forced to go on a grocery ‘death march’ literally eight feet from the entrance.  They are overcome with lethargy within the first aisle and demand to ride in the cart (even if they’re too big for the kid seat and displace the groceries in the other part of the cart).  They ask for every toy, chip, chocolate bar and coloring book they see. They have an immediate need to visit the bathroom when the cart is half-full and the furthest possible distance from the bathroom.  They holler out “I won’t hit you again, Momma!!” after the 6th time of ramming my already-bleeding heels with the damned grocery cart.

Restaurants:   They demand specific crayon colors, usually ‘pink’, which restaurants DO NOT HAVE.  They take their sweet time figuring out what they want to eat, while the wait-person rolls his/her eyes and escapes with an ‘I’ll give you a few more minutes’.  When the food arrives they squawk like a stuck pig that “THAT ISN’T WHAT I WANTED!!” or “WHY DOES SHE HAVE THAT?  I WANT THAT!!!”.  They use their shirts to wipe their faces. They tell the waitperson every small detail about their day, and embarrassing bits about me as well (“My mom usually drinks a lot more wine than this!”).  They disappear under the tables (commando-style) eat food off the floor, comment on underwear colors and then pop back up (Prairie-Dog-style) in someone else’s seat which immediately causes an argument.  They visit the bathroom, several times.  The only time they don’t go to the bathroom is when I threaten to take them there for a ‘little talk’.

Movies (that don’t attract their complete interest):  Again, the bathroom thing, and usually right during an interesting scene. When they return (before you ask they HAVE to visits restrooms alone lately because everything is  ’BY MY-SEFF!!!!’) they can’t find our seats so they stand in front and scream “MOMMMAAAA????”  They want popcorn AND candy AND a drink (which they’ll spill), which costs about 8 billion dollars.  They talk/ask questions during the entire damn thing.  They fight over which seat they sit in. I always have to sit between my daughters yet they won’t let me use either arm rest. 

Malls: I cannot get out of a mall for under $100 with my munchkins asking for everything under the sun and subsequent dining out at the food court or adjacent restaurants, and rental of strollers that they are too big for but cannot make it *another step* else they’ll die.  God forbid if the mall has a skating rink, carousel, Rainforest Cafe or movie theatre.  I’d rather go to Vegas where at least I have some chance of getting some money back. 

Next week I’ll discuss portrait studios, parks, tire stores and ice cream stores, all of which I’ve had the pleasure of  ’accidents’ of the disgusting kind, as well as the abovementioned niceties.

Eva just hollered from the bathtub (does this kid have a volume control??)

“Mommmaaaa!!!  Bring me a Q-Tip cuz I have water in my ears and I don’t want it getting into my brain”