Mornings are so hectic. When I'm able to carpool, we have to be out the door at 6:30 in the morning in order to get everyone dropped off in time. I don't mind getting up at 4:30 (or 4, if I'm working out at home), I don't mind stumbling out to the barn in the pitch black to feed horses and let the chickens out, I don't mind waiting in the cold air while the dogs do business. I don't' mind making breakfast and listening to the sound of Sponge-bob Square pants in the background. (While certainly not what anyone over the age of 10 really wants to hear at 5 am, its not as bad as listening to Dora, who makes me want to shove an icepick through my eyeball. Thank God my children don't like Dora anymore.) What I DO mind is being screamed at simply because I've asked my children to get out of bed. Or screamed at because I had the effrontery to ask them what they want for breakfast. Or listening to them scream at each other because one got the stool at the breakfast bar closest to the TV because the other one was even slower getting out of bed (and its really, really hard to be slower than the first one, who got up at the rate of a snail mired in sludge). It gets minutely better once one of them has had her medication, but the other one, who gets no medication, is impossible. I have watched this kid throw on his clothes in five seconds flat if there is something he wants to do outside in a hurry. But on school days, he miraculously "forgets" how to get dressed. "I need help!" he cries, sitting on the floor and wailing. And of course no matter what pants I've grabbed out of the drawer, he HATES them. They don't fit right, they don't feel right, they make him mad.
The newest strategy is to take away two of his Hot Wheels every day that he doesn't dress himself. He can have two back on any day that he does. So far we've got 10 hot wheels in Car Jail and none have been returned to him. At this rate I'll own them all by Christmas. Kid better start putting on his own damn clothes or his room's gonna be empty.
So, one way or another he's dressed. Then its time to go, and if I ask one of the kids to put the dogs away for me, the one that is not asks screams in indignation unless I ask them to help as well, or give them something else to do, like turn off the TV. Then they race for the door and scream at each other because one of them got to the doorknob LAST and it was UNFAIR. Then they argue over who has to shut the door behind them, because neither wants to. And on it goes, until one of them is dropped off at school. Rapturous peace and quiet ensues until I drop off the second one, who unless his best buddy has arrived before him, clings to me and sobs as if he is dying. "I want one more hug Mommy! JUST ONE MORE HUG! ONE MORE!!!" This after about 5 hugs and kisses. If his buddy M is there? I don't exist. (My eyes just rolled involuntarily when I typed that).
Finally, they are both dropped off. I either get to meet my carpool and sleep all the way to work, or I get to drive myself in and listen to...
NOTHING.
Silence is truly a blessed thing.
By the time I get to work in the morning I feel like I've lived through a tornado. Probably LOOK like it too. Work is where I go to rest and to not hear screaming. If I sound like I'm complaining, its probably because I am. I love and adore my children, could not imagine life without them and would throw myself in front of a speeding train to save them, but nowhere is it written that a mother can't bitch and moan every once in a while about just how demonic her otherwise adorable children can be.
