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Go Nigel, Go!
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Would You Like To Buy My Monkeys?
Oct
23
It’s Not You, It’s Me.
by Leslie
If I haven’t been by to visit your blog or have neglected to respond to your e-mail, I am sorry. I’ve started to fall behind again. The number of unread posts in my Bloglines is reaching infinity. They’ve run out of numbers to count them. Now, it’s just a symbol. Or maybe I just can’t see very well. Because I’m dealing with stuff like this:
Do you see that up there? Julia colored the keys on our piano. Red. Every.single.key. Sure, it’ll come off. It isn’t the clean-up that’s the issue. It’s the message this Crayola graffiti is sending, which is, “Fuck you, you stupidhead Mother. I don’t like you very much anymore.”
I’ve fallen out of favor with my girl. She has declared that she likes Daddy better than me. (It isn’t all roses for him either, though. Grandma blows us both out of the water.)
She has begun second-guessing everything I say.
I tell her, “Julia, you can’t have a popsicle.”
So, she goes to ask Daddy. When Daddy wisely advises her, “What your Mother says goes,” she shifts her tactic. She demands a popsicle. She stages a sit-in at the refrigerator.
Finally, I say, “Julia, you cannot have a popsicle because we are out of popsicles.”
And she says, “Open up the freezer and SHOW ME that we are out of popsicles.”
I am offended that she would suggest that I’m lying.
At playgroup today, we were celebrating a birthday. There were cupcakes. When it was time to go, the kids were getting baggies of apple slices to eat on the way home. Julia asked for another cupcake. I said, “No. You’ve had enough cupcakes.”
So, she went and asked one of the other mothers. Thankfully, the other mother told her she needed to check with me.
Again, I told her no. So, she proceeded to throw the most ridiculous and embarrassing temper tantrum of all time.
Why? Because Julia is kind of a jerk right now.
I don’t know what she’s going through, but she’s not very nice. Or fun. Or nice. Yeah, she’s not very nice at all.
And I’m just tired. Oh, so tired. And I’m short-tempered.
Just the other day, as I was reprimanding her for the doing the very thing I had told her not to do three times, she said, “I just don’t know how to make you happy, Mommy.”
Suddenly, I saw a flash of her, in twenty years, sitting in a therapist’s office crying and saying she’s never been able to please me. And then the therapist says, “Aha!” And it’s in writing and certified by a doctor that I ruined her life.
Mostly, I feel sad. I keep telling myself it’s a phase. That every now and then, she just has to step away from me and it’s easier for her to do when she’s mad at me. I can’t bend the rules just to get her to talk to me. She’s testing the boundaries. I need to show her where they are. A week from now, it’ll all be okay.
But, I miss my girl. She doesn’t want to hear what I have to say or see what I want to show her. She doesn’t even want to kiss me goodnight. I feel like we’re both missing out. And I worry - what if it isn’t a phase? What if we’re just growing apart? What if it isn’t fixed and the baby comes and this rift just gets bigger and bigger?
And so I feel yucky.
And then, when I’m feeling my yuckiest. Dave decides to confess something.
He had gone along with Julia and I to her ballet class on Monday. He sat in the waiting room with the other moms and me. Today, he felt the need to tell me, “You know, you really were right. You sure do talk a lot. You totally dominated the conversation at ballet. If there was even a second of silence, you filled it. You had something to say about everything. And you always got the last word. You really do talk. A LOT.”
Man, today sucks.
But hey, tomorrow will be better. And I’ll be around to visit your blogs. And I’ll get to those e-mails. I promise.
Comments
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Ooooooh. Aaaaah.
Awww Leslie….it is just one of those shitty days. This too shall pass.
As I said to you before…I dare you to get together with me & THEN we shall see who talks a lot!
We will have a talk war!
I had a shitty day too.
Slept in.
Hot water tap for the shower would not turn on…..appears to be stripped.
Man was i pissed.
My almost 13 year would not get out of bed.
I have headache.
I think I gained more weight.
No…I KNOW I gained more weight.
I like it when we have our poopy days together…..then I don’t feel so alone.
((((HUGS)))) to you.
Kids go through these phases and they are worse when you are pregnant or have a new baby. Wait till the baby gets here, you will think now is perfect!
Our 3 year old son has specific things that he likes me to do with him and specific things that he likes his daddy to do for him. And if we try to switch things, he has a tantrum. In my head, I just say he needs these things to be constant for him if only to make myself feel better.
Hope your week gets better!
You are right and this will pass. Be strong. And the talking? I’ll take you and Mackeydoodle on any day my friend
I promise you it’s just a phase. Julia’s just asserting her independence and also trying to find out your emotional boundaries. She wants to know that you’ll love her anyway. As for the tired and short-tempered, I feel the same way and I’m not even pregnant. Though I hear in about 20 years we’ll both feel a lot better.
You know, I think what people really mean when they say “so and so talks too much” is “I didn’t get to talk enough.” And my feeling is that if an adult feels like s/he didn’t get to talk enough then s/he needs to be more assertive. So you’re just assertive. And that’s a good thing.
It really is just a phase. My kids do it too. I promise it will pass, just give it a few more days. And tell Dave to shove it. You’re an interesting person with lots to say. He’s just jealous.
Hope your day gets better.
Sweetie! I think it’s a phase that will subside soon enough. And I know how you feel about falling behind with reading blogs. It’s happened to me the last three weeks. I’ll never catch up!
Oh Leslie… it is so VERY normal for kids to act like that from time to time. I promise it will pass (and then come again, and then pass again… many times). It gets worse as they grow up and get larger vocabularies and insult you in ways that would actually sound impressive, were they not aimed at you.
It will pass. She loves you.
My son went through a “daddy” phase. It lasted a few years but as he got older mommy and daddy went back to being equal. He still cuddles and I’m greatful for that since he’s almost 7. I say take anything she’ll give no matter how tired you are. They grow and change so fast!
Don’t get so down on yourself, Julia loves you to pieces. It’s too bad that you can’t just enjoy having a little space while it lasts - why are we like that?
And talkers make life so much easier for those of us who aren’t always big talkers. Think of how boring it would be to sit and wait for ballet class to be over if you weren’t there to keep the conversation going? My husband is always amazed at how my friends and I can sit around and talk for hours, he just doesn’t understand what we could possibly talk about for so long.
I know what you mean about falling behind in Bloglines. I can’t keep up either.
Boy, Dave sure is honest and brave. When I’m honest, my wife gives me a glare and then tells me, “who asked you?”