Life Lessons: The Balance Between Bitch and Sweetness

I am a stay at home mom, which means that whenever I have to go somewhere my kids are often with me.  I don’t mind too much.  It does get to be too much when I have both of them and they can’t stop wrestling in public, but most of the time it is not a hassle.  Maybe it is my imagination, but I get the feeling that many people, especially other mothers, look at me and think why can’t she leave those kids at home.  I, also, have guilt because I am constantly saying: Please stop that!, Don’t hit!, Be quiet, there are other people here!, etc.  I feel as if I am constantly reprimanding my kids and that, itself, annoys people.  On the flip side, if I did nothing and let Sam dance on the office coffee table or allow Amber to scream while Sam jumps on her in the corner, I get the MY GOD looks.  Really it is a no win situation, so I do my best to go with the flow.  Get in and out with minimal causalities.  All this is internalized, so I can recognize it as my own neuroses, but then someone will say something out loud and all the internalization becomes a reality that is better left in my head than out in public.

To alleviate a lot of these problems I make a lot of early morning appointments, when SoHubby can be with the kids.  You would be amazed at how much you can get done in the early morning.  Sure waking up before the sun is a bit brutal, but you can’t have everything.  This not always convenient and I am back to dragging the kids all over the hot city hoping and praying that we can get through every appointment without me completely coming undone.  I think I have done pretty well these last few months, considering I am very pregnant, very uncomfortable, and the minute the heat hits me I feel as if I am in a coffin six feet under. 

Monday I had an afternoon appointment with my ultrasound doctor (I feel these layman terms are better for everyone, but yes, I finally did find out her title), first mistake.  This office is always backed up and the wait is always, at least, an hour after the scheduled appointment.  I knew going in we would be in for a rough ride, but like always hoped and prayed that TODAY would be different.  Second mistake, being early.  I have a habit of being too early.  You would think that wasn’t such a big deal or maybe even a good thing, but when the wait is already guaranteed to be long, being early doesn’t help things.  We settled into the waiting room and things started off okay.  The kids had toys to play with and hadn’t resorted to violence to keep themselves entertained.  Things went downhill when SoHubby showed up.  I could tell he was annoyed and didn’t want to be there.  Not because he didn’t want to experience the magic of seeing his unborn child, but he had work to do and knew, like the rest of us, that the wait was going to be long and tortuous.  After a trip to the hospital cafeteria for snacks and my legs going numb, I decided we had to leave.  It was 2 hours after my appointment time and I knew none of us were going to make it until we got seen.  Sure it was an afternoon wasted, but at least no one died and we were able to free ourselves from the grips of the waiting room.  Besides, I knew I had a NST the next day and the baby had been moving so I knew there were no problems that couldn’t wait.

At my NST appointment the nurse offered me the option of seeing the ultrasound doctor at another hospital in town.  Okay, sure why not.  After experiencing such long waits at the uptown hospital I was ready for the same at the Metairie hospital, so color me shocked when I called to schedule an appointment and they gave me one the same day.  WAIT!!  You mean I don’t have to wait a week, or two, or 4?  I was even more shocked when I was seen 30 minutes after my scheduled appointment.  This was like a dream.  It couldn’t be true.  The doctor would later apologize to me about the long wait at the other hospital and explained that they overbooked her appointments often.  I just wish someone had informed me of this in the beginning, because I would have gone to the Metairie hospital with it’s short waits without a second thought. 

Asking children, especially ages 3 and 7, to sit still and behave is always asking too much.  Sure they can do it for a small amount of time, but really they are just bidding their time before they can let loose.  And usually that time is when mom is unable to snatch an arm and whisper stern warnings in their ears or might be too embarrassed to threaten to sell them to the gypsies that live in the shadows of the French Quarter.  Or basically when mom is half naked on an exam table getting her stomach smashed by an ultrasound tech. 

The kids were fine for a few minutes, but the lure of all the blinking lights, weird noises and huge machines was too much for them.  They just couldn’t resist sneaking over to take a peek.  I was the stupid one for thinking that just them being able to see their unborn sister on a flat screen TV would hold their attention.  Hey, we all have our delusions.  I am sure their ambivalence will subsided once their sister is reality.  See there goes those delusions, again.  So while I was trying to watch the blob on the screen and determine for myself what they could be looking for and wincing from the pain of an contraction while a strong headed tech pushed on my bloated belly, I, also, had to discipline my kids.  Sam was the first one shocked when I told him to stop hitting his sister and sit down.  He would ask how did I know what he was doing, I would continue the tradition of instilling the fear of mom knowing everything he does whether I can see him or not.  Then Amber would try to get over on me by claiming that the magazine her brother was screaming about was hers first.  The tech came in handy at that moment and spoke up to say that she saw that Amber snatched it away from her brother.  That scared her little butt into a 30 second submission, because mom had reinforcements. 

Later when it was determine that I needed an internal ultrasound to make sure everything was still in lockdown mode, I would become torn between agreement and utter shock at what someone else would have to say about my kids.  The nurse and doctor ushered the kids into another room so they could watch TV and not be frightened by the sight of their mother being probed.  Then they both chimed in that Amber is quite bossy.  What 7 year old girl isn’t?  Lately, Amber has taken the position that she is Sam’s second mother and sometimes tries to over ride my decisions.  Don’t worry she soon learns who is the Alpha in this relationship and settles down, however, it doesn’t stop her from testing the waters on occasion.  But to hear all that from total strangers sent me into mother bear mode, but I have learned to talk myself down from these not so tragic situations.  And really I had to agree, because Amber is bossy,  but they continued, she is manipulative, too.  Really this talk had to stop, because as much as I agree there is just some things I don’t need confirmed by other people.  I simply said I agree, but she is sweet and learning to be better.  Finally, we were all done and we were all able to walk freely fully clothed without medical equipment attached.

I do feel guilty that someone else saw this in my child, because you want to believe your child is the most sweetest person in the world.  And let’s face it, every negative remark is a negative remark on your parenting, at least in the mind of the parent.  However, spend anytime with Amber and you will learn that sweetness can turn to ugliness in a nanosecond then back again.  I think of it as her learning to maneauvar through this world and it is my job to steer her, no matter how firmly sometimes, in the right direction.  There have been many lessons for Amber with this new attitude she has adopted.  There was her snotty response to her Godparents at her birthday dinner and her Godfather rebutting that maybe he shouldn’t have gotten her a present.  There are the times when she tries to on the attitude of the big girls, who have taken a liking to her, in school only to find that the other girls may not want to be her friend that day.  I am there to explain to her that niceness will always win over being snotty and mean.  Lord knows it took me forever to learn that lesson.  She will get it and there will be many more life lessons along the way to smack her upside her head.  We are both trying to make it through this new stage of her life and there have been stumbles, but so far the scraps are not that bad.  I am just hoping that soon she will learn that she needs to find a nice way to manipulative her way through this world, but who knows. After 36 years, I am still trying to find the balance between nasty bitch and using honey to get what I want.  Maybe I need to just look into getting one of those babysitters, everyone is talking about and make it easier on all of us.