One of Those Days

All, or at least a lot of, mothers secretly wonder if everyone else thinks their kids are monsters. I mean, we see them at their best and their worst, and it all seems to balance out. Sure they have their bad days, but are they that bad? They can be so sweet and adorable sometimes! Feedback from the outside world is unpredictable and inconsistent. The same day I have a librarian commend my girls for their exceptional behavior at the library, I get "the look" from my mother when my daughter goes streaking through the house butt naked singing at the tops of her lungs. So I am left to wonder as to my child's true identity, and my opinion sways based on the day's evidence. Today, I am firmly convinced my eldest daughter's sole purpose in life is to drive me crazy. Here is the evidence:

I put Selah down for her morning nap, and tried to grab a quick shower. It was almost 11:00 after all, and I was still in my jammies with my hair askew. I told Elianna to play outside the door, which I left open so I could watch her, and warned her that, sudsy and dripping wet or not, I would come out if necessary. "I be a GOOD girl." she assured me. What I could see of her through the curtain she seemed to be playing happily, and for a moment I congratulated myself on my self-sufficient, obedient child. The warm fuzzy feeling was not to last long. When I got out of the shower, I discovered that she had been playing with a basket of hair accessories that contained, oh, about 974 tiny little clips, rubber bands, bows, and goodness knows how many other delightful choking hazards that were now strewn all over her bedroom floor. I told her to clean it up, and after picking up about three clips she decided to dump out her Mega blocks instead. So, I did the calm rational thing. I locked her door, and told her she wasn't coming out until it was all cleaned. She immediately threw a tantrum, and declared "She loved Daddy and wanted him to come home." I got the hint, but felt like yelling back, "I want him to come home, too! I would rather be at the mall drinking Starbucks and trying on shoes than engaging in a battle of the wills with a precocious two-year-old!" Instead,I just went in, hugged her and had a heart-to-heart talk about how dangerous it would be for Selah to eat her hair stuff, so hurry and get it all cleaned before she wakes up. I went to make lunch, and miraculously she picked up all the hair stuff. Crisis averted. Then the phone rings. Now, with Elianna the phone ringing triggers a primeval response from deep within that demands my attention at any cost. She will do, quite literally, anything to get my attention while I am on the phone, but I figured with the whole hair accessory incident behind us, our relationship had progressed beyond this. I was wrong. In the first two minutes of conversation, Elianna climbed up on the counter and nearly emptied a bottle of seasoned salt all over everything. Pausing, of course, to draw some cool designs in the process. I put her in time out, and started cleaning up the mess. Mom somehow managed to give me "the look" over the phone (how mothers manage to send their disapproval over the telephone wires, I'll never know) and stated the obvious, "It's because you're on the phone." I took this as a dare, as if she was saying, "Well, we can cut our conversation short, but then you will be giving in to the whims of the child you apparently cannot control." Hmmmm. So, I decided to prove my parenting and multi-tasking skills and finish our planning. (That was the reason for the call - we were planning a trip out of town.) I then casually mentioned something I had written for a contest, and decided it was safe to run upstairs for two minutes to read her the little blurb I had entered. When I came back downstairs, Elianna had been feverishly scooping ground coffee out of the coffee can... into my coffee cup. Maybe she thought I needed the boost, but since I only drink decaf this was rather pointless. Hearing me coming down she panicked and tried to cover up her crime by pouring the grounds (and my coffee) back into the can. Back into time out she went, with a swat for good measure. I cleaned the mess while she bawled. I am still trying to downplay this all to my mother, and at the same time talk faster so we can finish up and I can settle my children down. (Selah woke up during the clean-up of the coffee incident and was crawling around merrily throughout all of this.) Suddenly I realize that Elianna is sitting very quietly in time out. A little too quietly. So quietly, it's almost as though she... isn't even there. Because she wasn't. She had sneaked into the other room with a bottle of cocoa butter and was applying it all over herself and anything within reach. By this time, I have remembered why I never attempt phone conversations while Elianna is awake, and decide not even to answer my phone the rest of the day. It doesn't help. Elianna goes on to play a fun game called Empty Out Every Container of Toys and then Refuse to Pick Any Up, and I spend the next 30-45 minutes begging, threatening, cajoling, beseeching, and anything else short of hollering like a redneck trailer queen to get her to pick everything up. Slowly but surely, she does manage to put the bulk of it back in its appropriate containers, and I am delighted to see that it is FINALLY nap time. I resist the urge to chuck her into her bed from the hallway, instead spending some time cuddling her and letting her know I do love her... even when she makes me crazy. She smiles at me sweetly and says, "When I wake up, I want to play with Sissy!"
Oh dear, I'd better go hide the baby.