I love how Mike and I are often lectured to by Lily after a day of learning.  She enjoys teaching us the same way her teachers do - including, telling us to put our listening ears on, a lot of hand waving and dramatic voice tonal shifts.  Tonight, she said, “Daddy, if you are sick, or feeling sad, I would send you a card or give you a hug.”  Mike told her how nice that was of her.  She looked exasperated and said, “I KNOW, but that’s what COMPASSION is.  COMPASSION is being nice to people when they don’t feel so good.”  Yeah, you idiot!!!  It’s not sweet, it’s COMPASSION!  Listening to my little 4 year old say a big long word like compassion, including using it in the right form, made me all gooey with love. 

I’m going to need some compassion in dealing with Arden - I bought a book by someone named Dr. Karp who is supposed to fix all my problems with my headstrong Ruth Jr. (my paternal grandmother).  Supposedly Dr. Karp is going to teach me how to communicate with my little neanderthal - that’s what he calls toddlers - and hopefully I will stop having the same argument over and over again with Arden. It goes something like this:

“Arden, stop drawing on the table.”
“NO!” 
“Arden, don’t say no to me. Don’t say no to adults.”
“NOOOO!” (followed by a smile that seems to say, You’re getting riled, Mommy, and I LOVE TO PUSH YOUR BUTTONS!)
“Arden, I mean it.  Stop saying no!”
“No! No! No!”  Followed by manical laughter. 

Dr. Karp, if your book doesn’t work, I’m sending my 2 year old air-express to you. 

In the meantime, if anyone feels compassion, they will hug any number of people in my life struggling right now, including my brother.  He’s had heart issues for a long time, but we all got some less-than-Christmas-spirity news today from his cardiologist and it looks like another round of surgery is in his very near future.  Aside from my frustration with him for refusing to see doctors, I just want my brother alive and healthy.  So I’m trying to channel my frustration into compassion, and do what Lily says, and maybe buy him a Barbie castle to make him feel better.

I was just at lunch and received a call on my cell phone from one of the nurses at preschool.  The first thing I thought was, “Please GOD, NO LICE!”  Thankfully, she wasn’t calling to report nits on Lily. 

No, instead she was calling to run something by me.  All week Lily has been telling her teachers a variety of aches are paining her, including “my tummy hurts”, “my nose feels weird” and “my head hurts RIGHT HERE” (with a dramatic palm slapping the middle of her forehead).  Today, she told her teachers that everything was hurting and she needed to go home to be with her mommy, because her mommy would give her medicine to make her feel better.  Well, after a number of days of these complaints, they sent her to the nurse to be checked out.

No fever. No sore throat.  No ear infection.  No eye infection. Even her cold is barely there, though she still coughs occasionally, usually to get my attention.  The nurse didn’t want to say it, but when I said, “She’s totally milking this to get out of school, ” she gave a sigh of relief and said, “I didn’t know how to tell you that I thought she was faking it.”  Turns out she was fine during outside play and reading, but suddenly took ill before lunch and wanted to go to Get Well.  Once there, she was magically cured and began to play with all the cool toys they have there that are not in her classroom.  And I’m positive that in her not-yet-4 year old brain, she recalled last Friday . . . how I rushed to school to pick her up, stroked her leg all the way to a special lunch with just daddy and me at McDonald’s, how I cuddled with her during nap time and read her stories, then watched the entire Little Mermaid movie with her while she sprawled on my lap and I stroked her hair. I mean, seriously.  Who wouldn’t want that every day? 

So on one hand, I’m impressed that she is now old enough to put being “sick” together with “going home and being pampered”, and on the other hand, I’m super guilty because of course I think she’s doing this because I am a working mother and she’s dying for alone time with me.  Then I tell myself that I used to totally work it to go home as well, and I came from a stay at home mom.  That makes three hands, but who’s counting.  On the 4th hand, what a little devil!  I have the world’s only child who loves taking medicine.  She’s been begging me for cough syrup every night. I gave in last night but tonight, no way. She’s not sick enough for it.  What kid likes to take medicine? She even got used to her eye drops and didn’t mind so much, though no one in their right mind asks, or begs, to have liquid dripped into their eyeball.  Yuck. 

Meanwhile, I am still at a client’s office and Lily is still at preschool, probably cursing me and shaking her little brown fist in my general direction, muttering the first of a million to come “Curses, foiled by mommy again!” phrases. 

Last night, I got home early and started cooking dinner.  I made a tuna tetrazzini, albeit from a mix - and I figured the girls would like it because it was warm, gooey, and had cheese in it.  We had a vegetable and some Goldfish with it.  Lily took one bite and said, “Mommy, I don’t like this.”  She basically refused to eat the rest of her dinner.  Arden, on the other hand, chowed down on it, slurping up the noodles and attacking her yogurt.  If nothing else, Arden is a prolific eater. 

Tonight on the way home from school, Lily said, “Mommy, can you please try harder and make a better dinner than you did last night?”  I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, or throw something at her.  Her eating habits are just so frustrating.  (Editor’s Note:  Admitting that is going to get me endless amounts of crap from my parents, who had to deal with my bizarre eating habits for YEARS.) Tonight, Mike made dinner, hoping for better luck.  She ate ONE chicken nugget, 3 cheese cubes, and one single buttered noodle.  Wow, she’s going to be a whale if she keeps up this pace.  Arden mowed through her chicken, ate a ton of noodles, and inhaled her cheese, plus some of Mike’s, and then ate some of Lily’s remaining nuggets.  We had to basically threaten, cajole and plead with Lily to eat 2 nuggets and another noodle.  We pulled out the big guns - and told her if she didn’t eat that piece of chicken, she wouldn’t get a book tonight. It worked. 

I hate threatening when it comes to food.  If she’s not hungry, she’s not hungry - and I can still vividly remember sitting before a cold plate of entirely unappealing food, watching the sauces congeal, and hearing the standard refrain of “You will sit there until you finish your dinner.”  I’ve read too many books about eating disorders and how forcing food is a nice straight path to compulsive overeating. However, if I had normal sized children that were even ON the charts, I’d be less worried.  When Lily doesn’t eat a couple of meals, it totally stresses me out. 

So, while trying to be calm yet firm with Lily, Arden was shoveling food in like there was no tomorrow and shouting “Poop!  Baby Poop! Ooooooooh, Aye-a win Poop!!!”  (translation: I just took a huge poo, please change my diaper immediately).  It was humorous and entertaining.  I think she’ll be quicker to potty train than Lily - she has a great desire to sit on the potty.  I think she has potty-envy from watching Lily on it all the time.  And I have grocery-bill envy for those that don’t have diapers and wipes on their regular purchase list.  I can probably buy a vacation home with all the money we’ll save on rump covers. 

If anyone has great ideas for kid-friendly dinners, my ego and morale has been beaten down enough to ask for it.  Send them my way.  Then, if Lily asks for a “better dinner tomorrow”, it will be your fault and not mine. 

I just got an email from Mike, husband and father extraordinaire.  Here are some particularly juicy excerpts:

So, here’s a summary of the morning events (it’s all good, really).

Steve comes at 8:15, and I’m upstairs getting Lily dressed.  So I go downstairs to let him in, and then we are talking about the stereo stuff.  Lily comes flying down the stairs, wearing her hat and mittens and her dress, but nothing else, guffawing like the giggly-wiggly that she is.  We had a good laugh about that.  Arden, meanwhile, is mysteriously absent and quiet this whole time… (note from Editor:  I call that “Ominously Quiet” - and for good reason)

I take Lily upstairs to finish getting her dressed and Arden is in their bathroom.  She has her stamper clutched in her paw and she has decorated the bathroom wall nicely with it.  Great.  Not a big deal - probably will come off totally with a good scrubbing, if not, nothing a little touch up paint can’t cure.  I explained to her that was naughty and she pouted a bit, but didn’t lose it, which was good.

The girls and I get to the station.  You think Lily has thrown fits before (yes, she has)?  Well, I think I saw the mother of all fits.  I do not know who the little girl was, I have seen her and her dad before, though.  Anyway, she is face down in the parking lot screaming at the top of her lungs, louder than I think anyone has ever done.  He seems to be trying to teach her a lesson, because he basically is walking away from her, which of course makes her madder than ever.  The girls and I get into the station, but by this time the little girl has literally crawled to the station front door.  Dad is inside already.  I let the girls in and ask Dad if he wants me to hold the door open for his girl, who is still throwing a fit.  He smiles and says no, so I don’t.  I get Arden into Red Room, and as Lily and I are going to Blue Room, now, Dad and little girl are both inside the entryway and she is still freaking out.  I drop off Lily in Red Room, and now Dad and little girl (she is lying down by the front desk) are still battling and Ms. Bryce is trying to help out.  Wow.  If I had that morning I would have gone back home to bed.

HA!  So it isn’t just my children! 

PS.  Note to father of screaming child: I’m so sorry that I am getting pleasure from your pain.  I’m just thrilled to know I’m not the only parent with tantrum-prone children at the school. 

That, my friends, is my favorite phrase these days. That simple five word phrase is supposed to be the reason why my normally sweet and loving eldest child acts like a emotionally unstable trainwreck every night when I pick her up.  I think I’m even beginning to feel the onset of a panic disorder whenever my wheels turn into the preschool parking lot, because I never know what I’m going to get.  Will it be the kind Lily who screams “MOMMY!” and hugs me? Or will it be her evil twin, who picks a fight with me within 10 (or if I’m lucky, 30) seconds of arriving in her classrom? 

Since Monday, I’ve only seen Lily’s evil twin.  The teachers explain that sometimes kids have difficulty transitioning from being in the control of their teachers to being under the control of their mother/father.  Okay. I get that.  Now how do I deal with it?  Monday, she was fighting me on putting her jacket on.  She didn’t want to wear it.  Mind you, it was like 40 degrees outside and she was wearing a t-shirt with barely short sleeves.  I wasn’t about to let her go into the parking lot without her coat, but I figured I’d pick a fight with her outside the confines of the classroom.  Her teacher overheard the battle and told Lily sternly, “Lily, listen to your mother. It’s cold out and you are going to wear your coat.”  She proceeded to zip Lily into the coat while Lily pouted and flashed me her look that says, “Beware - alien creature about to explode out of my body”. 

In the hallway on the way to pick up Arden, she turned, looked me dead in the eyes, and screamed, “I’M NOT WEARING THIS COAT!”  She ripped the zipper down, flung her jacket on the floor, and sprinted away from me.  I did some deep breathing exercises and chased her down the hallway, trying to maintain some motherly decorum.  Unfortunately I was wearing my extremly fashionable and extremely unstable clogs, and almost bit the dust halfway there.  And of course some father was behind me trying to ask me if I was okay when he was privately laughing and saying, “Women who were ridiculous shoes deserve to break ankles”.  Yeah, yeah, buddy. 

So Monday I let Lily get in the car with her t-shirt and made sure to leave her car door open the whole time I buckled Arden in.  Those nice arctic breezes were flowing through the car, and I watched my stubborn child glare at me and refuse to shiver.  We talked on the way home, I reasoned with her, I explained the different between Fall and Summer, and told her I didn’t want her to be uncomfortable, but that when I tell her to put on a coat, she needs to do it (I left off the DAMMIT! part of the sentence, even though I really wanted to say it). 

Last night I pulled into the Station at 5.15.  Within seconds of my arrival, Lily was already beginning to tell me that she wasn’t wearing a coat home.  This, from the same child who informed her teacher at outside play: “My mommy forgot to send hat and gloves, and I am very very cold.  I am going to tell my Mommy, you better bring my hat and gloves in tomorrow so I don’t freeze!!!” 

Instead of holding it together in front of her teachers, she had a screaming fit and meltdown in front of her entire class and both teachers.  Neither could believe how she was acting, because, “she never does that here”.  I know they don’t mean it the way I take it, but when they say that, what I hear is: “We can control your child, and you can’t.”  Ah, to have been raised ANYTHING other than Catholic.

I got down on my knees and looked her in the eye and explained calmly and quietly that she would wear her jacket, and I was putting it on her RIGHT NOW.  She ran away from me.  I chased her down, zipped her into her jacket, and grabbed her hand.  Thankfully I wasn’t wearing ridiculous shoes so I could actually catch her.  She started screaming, “It’s TOO TIGHT!  AHHHH!  It’s TOO TIGHT!  It’s CHOKING ME!”  It wasn’t, but that goes without saying.  I calmly left the room and told her she was not allowed to go to pick up Arden with me unless she stopped crying.  She held it together long enough to pick up Arden and jump in the ball pit, but once we were back in the main part of the center, she started screaming again.  And I mean, screaming.  You can reference my video documentary of a temper tantrum here if you can’t remember what Lily’s screams sound like. 

I called Mike for a sanity check, because I’m really trying not to yell at Lily anymore. It doesn’t do any good, and even though it makes me feel better at the moment, I am riddled with guilt and self-hatred later because of it.  Sorry to do this to my mother, but my mom was a yeller, and I really hated that.  So I’m trying to break myself of the yelling thing.  (note to my mother:  I completely understand why you yelled at me. I deserved it, and if I had been you, I would have put me in a small, dark room with soundproofing so I wouldn’t have to hear myself yelling back)

I decided to ride home in silence.  Arden was thankfully being good and playing quietly with her stickers, while occasionally shooting glances at Lily that seemed to say, “Please shut up, you’re hurting my head” or “What the heck is wrong with YOU???”  After Lily let loose a burst of screams (“AHHHH!  YAAAHHH!  AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”) I turned around and told her that if she screamed again, she would lose her tv priviledges for the evening.  She screamed immediately after my threat.  I said, “Okay, no tv tonight.”  (I usually let them watch something while we cook dinner).  That was good of me to stand firm, but I made life hard for myself because now a really big tantrum ensued, complete with Lily screaming and chanting, “I WANNA WATCH TV!  I WANNA WATCH TV WIV MY SISTER!  I WANNA WATCH TV!”  Since I had nothing better to do, I decided to count how many times she said it.  By the time I hit my neighborhood, we were up to 38 repetitions.  On a humorous note, I handed her a tissue silently because she had snot everywhere.  She threw it back at me.  Then she yelled, “MOMMY!  It was your decision and now you have to have the consequence!  It was your CHOICE!”  I have no idea what she meant, but it was funny because I’m always saying that to her. 

48 minutes later the tantrum ended with me sitting calmly in front of her on the floor and holding her sobbing, sweaty head in my lap while explaining that the behavior must stop, that it’s not a good way to spend our evenings, and that I would no longer tolerate the school psychotic episodes.  Period. We hugged, kissed, and she settled down . . . until she realized I wasn’t going on the field trip this Friday with her class.  She had big crocodile tears running down her face when I told her Hannah’s mom was going, but explained that daddy and I couldn’t because we needed to be with Aunt Lois.  “But Mommy, I really need you and daddy to be with me!  Other kids parents are coming!  Please come with me!”  Talk about heartbreaking.  She handled the news fairly well.

The best part of the night was when Mike and Lily were alone in her bedroom, and he had finished reading to her. He told her he wanted to talk to her about her behavior lately, and she listened very patiently and responded at times to what he said.  He told her he wanted to work on three things - one was her behavior when we pick up at school, another was her nail biting, and a third was her constantly jumping out of bed when she’s supposed to be sleeping.  It was hilarious to hear Mike say, “Okay, so what do we need to work on?”  and Lily respond, “I need to not be bad at school to mommy or you, I need to stop biting my nails and I need to stay in my bed and GO TO SLEEP!”  Then she kissed and hugged both of us, told us to dream of rainbows, butterflies and the number 6, and waved us out of her room. 

I’ll let you know how tonight goes. May the force be with all of us.