Mary Angel
(9/2022) There are those moments as a mom that seem like they are overwhelming and never ending. Maybe it is a long day of temper tantrums, or a bad day at work that runs late, or a bunch of little things that seem to be piling up. Sometimes all it takes is a small gesture to change the mood on the whole day.
When my kids were about 10, 8, 5, 2 I put the baby down for bed and my oldest son offered to start the bedtime book for his sister and brother. I really appreciated it because I hadn’t felt like I had gotten any time to snuggle her all day. It was a hectic day of kids bickering, phones ringing, and dare I saw diarrhea diapers!
The day started out like any other, with the baby waking me at 6 a.m. and the rest of the kids getting up and ready for breakfast. I went low hassle with breakfast on this particular morning and chose cereal. Luckily for me the kids all love cereal. Everything was going well at this point. Everyone finished their cereal and drank the milk (this never happens), then they each brought their bowls up and put them in the sink. This was the point in the day when I should have noticed things were going a little too well.
After breakfast the bickering started. This was actually foreshadowing for the rest of their young lives (isn’t hindsight amazing). The two middle children began bickering and have never stopped since. Okay that is a slight exaggeration. They do take a break every once in a while, like when they sleep or when one of them goes to a friend’s house. Now that they are young "adults" they still bicker, but they also confide in each other and turn to each other in times of need and happiness. Anyway, they pretty much bickered, pushed, and antagonized one another all day long.
Mid-morning, we played some games and had a snack. The kids had a blast with Legos and built some extremely tall towers, and my baby had a blast knocking them down. Luckily this did not start more arguing. It really is the two middle ones. After games and a snack and a lot of poopy diaper, we went outside to go for a walk. We were very blessed at the time to have a neighborhood playground not too far away. A bit of fighting over who would get which swing, who would be first on the slide, and who would push the stroller on the way home, we walked through the door exhausted and just in time for lunch. Lunch consisted of leftovers and was followed by mandatory quiet time in your room if you were over the age of 5. The two youngest took an afternoon nap and fell asleep pretty quickly after the walk home from the playground.
After the naps and cleaning up the dirty diaper and washing the soiled crib sheets (I can’t stress the amount of poop I cleaned up on this particular day), we all sat down to watch some Disney channel and discuss the upcoming school year. The boys were excited to see their friends, but the younger one was not thrilled about that being attached to homework. My oldest daughter would be starting kindergarten and she was a little nervous, but her brothers tried to calm her nerves. I wasn’t super nervous because she was such a social butterfly, I knew she would make friends pretty quickly. This was interrupted by several telemarketing spam calls on both the home phone and my cell phone.
Now it was time for a grocery store run and low and behold I had a flat tire. After asking the boys to sit with the girls and watch a little more television, I changed the tire, and we were on our way. We dropped the tire off and found out it could be patched, which brightened the day up a bit. I couldn’t say the same for the grocery store. I have a rule in the grocery store, or any store for that matter; if you can’t behave yourselves then we will leave and get nothing. As my kids have grown up, we have gotten many complements on their behavior in restaurants and store, and I must attribute it to the fact that we just didn’t accept bad behavior. This was one of those "teaching" moments when I asked them once to stop grabbing things off the shelf, or constantly asking for snacks, or shoving one another, and then I just put back the few groceries we had, and we went out to the car. Some of them were begging, one was crying, and the baby was
playing with my keys completely oblivious. And yes, people were staring, and one couple pointed, and it was embarrassing for all of us, but it had to be done. When we got to the car, I asked them to tell me why we were there. The boys understood completely and explained to their sister. I told them we would come back the next day but would immediately leave if the behavior hadn’t improved.
When we got home, I realized I had nothing to make for dinner, since that was the number one goal of the grocery store trip. Luckily, I always keep a backup of spaghetti noodles and jarred sauce in the back of the pantry for just such an occasion. As I was making dinner for the 5 of us, since my husband was on a business trip, I asked the boys to set the table. When I heard a small thud and one of them say, "Oooooo, you are going to be in so much trouble!", I quickly ran into the dining room. There on the floor was an entire container of Parmesan cheese dumped in a pile like Mount Everest and all fingers were pointing at the soon-to-be kindergartener. After interrogating each suspect individually, I concluded that she had spotted a large cheese ball in the container and when she went to fish it out the container had proven to be too big for her little hands and flew into the air, landing upside down on the floor. To try and solve the
problem she had gone over and lifted it straight up, dumping the entire contents on the floor.
A little while after dinner everyone got bathes and showers and it was time for bed. As my oldest read the book to his siblings I came in and found them bickering again, at the end of a very long day. He could see I was exhausted and immediately said, "Mom, let me handle this. I have a great idea." Knowing that he was my reader and scholar who loved to memorize monologues, I just knew he was going to recite some amazing speech he had read. He looked at both of them, lovingly put his hands on the sides of their little faces and knocked their heads together like two coconuts while saying, "knock It Off!" I was in shock! The two of them instantly stopped bickering and burst out laughing. They all went to bed smiling and saying they would behave better tomorrow, and I went to bed completely confused at what had just happened!
Remember it only takes one second to change the mood of your day, if it isn’t going well then change course!
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