ALL the Drama

Addie emerges from the kids’ bedroom, where she has been cooling off from a howling, sobbing tantrum over my “ruining her life” by not letting her run into traffic when we left the park. I catch a glimpse of her creeping silently (should have been a clue) down the hallway into the kitchen. The next thing I know, she and Owen are laughing maniacally as they spit milk into a metal colander. Turns out Addie has been doing this in her room, and then trying to lap up the milk like a cat, as evidenced by the giant milk puddle on her chair and the trail of droplets on the carpet.

The spitting out of beverages into bowls has been a separate, ongoing issue (gross little humans) so they are given immediate consequences (time out for O, cleaning up the mess for A). Owen, only a minor accomplice, recovers quickly. But Addie, whose master plan has been thwarted by her stick-in-the-mud parents, launches into a full meltdown. Eventually she stops shrieking long enough to reveal her explanation.

One hand raised, moving up and down for emphasis on every other word, face blotchy and red with tears and voice shaky, she offers up the following. “But MOM, when I was in your TUMMY, I SHOULD have been born a KITTEN!”

I mean, how can I really dish out a punishment for that flawless logic? If you were meant to be born a cat, you must lap up milk with your ill-equipped human tongue; even better if it has been spit from your mouth into a leaking vessel.

Meanwhile, back in the land of the 2 year old, I hear for the millionth time, “MOMMY! Fix this.” Owen holds up a piece of his garbage truck that has broken off, been glued back and breaks off again on the daily. With every second it takes me to assure that his sister and my babysitting charge are both out of imminent danger and walk toward him to “fix” it, his wailing frustration builds. If the garbage truck is not put back together in whatever he deems an acceptable amount of time, he is full blown kicking, screaming, and crying on the floor. Only to tear the damn piece off again minutes later.

This is what we are dealing with over here, folks: ALL the drama.

We have 2-year old drama, 4-year old drama, and pregnancy drama.

Our trinity of tempers creates daily clashes of moods and hormones. Combined, we have ALL the overreacting.

Addie throws herself on the ground upon being told to wait just a minute before I can turn on an episode of Super Why. “I will NEVER do anything else and I will NEVER be happy!”

I lose my patience with Owen when he refuses to try to get himself down from the toilet or pull up his own pants. It hurts my back and crunches my pregnant belly to bend, squat, or reach down to do it all day long, but only one of us can act like a stubborn toddler (me: it should clearly be me).

One kid demands PB&J, the other cream cheese and salami, for lunch. I demand to only make one sandwich a day, considering I spend an absurd amount of time making food. The result is that every lunch is a battle and at least two of the three of us (always including me) loses.

Not a one of us knows what to do with the afternoons. No one has the same energy level, no one wants to be bored or entertain themselves or others, and we just cannot see eye to eye on park or no park, art project or play outside or any other question that leads us toward survival until Kevin gets home.

Addie wakes up in the middle of the night, comes charging into our room, flings herself on the bed, and wails: “my voice doesn’t sound like it usually does”. How do I begin to unpack that one? I have zero ideas what the actual fuck she is crying about. And then I cry a little, because it’s the tenth time one of them has woken me up on this particular night, and I have a cold. Waaaahhhh.

We are a trifecta of tantrums, a family of fussiness, a collective hot mess of meltdowns.

As much as we sometimes fuel each other’s fires, going through these dramatic phases together has some advantages (poor Kevin, though). It forces us all to have a little more empathy and go easy on each other, to spend quality time being grumpy together, and to get a bunch of issues out of the way simultaneously. Just like when a cold passes though the household: it seems harder for everyone to get it at once, but can actually be worse when we get it one at a time and end up with at least one person suffering for weeks.

Until it all passes, my solution to the daily triple breakdowns is the same as it has been since having a second kid: whoever is the most upset gets comforted first. These days, that is true even if I take a moment to console myself with a mental reminder that fleeing my house and hopping on a plane to anywhere-but-here is not a realistic option. Not today, at least.