Three Tiny Tyrants
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1/30/2019 0 Comments The Man In The Yellow HatPrison life with the trio is the constant chaos of a tornado of destruction whose touch-down never ceases. Rather, it moves from room to room, the cacophony of my “redirection” a.k.a. exasperated yelling falling on their deaf ears. From knocking two hours worth of folded laundry off the couch during a three way wrestling match in the living room to mixing up a batch of “mixey yuck” (their words, not mine) in the bathroom, their curiosity and natural inclination to rough and tumble play lend themselves to disarray and messes wherever they go.
As the frustration mounts in my chest and my patience wears thin, I pause to wonder how The Man in the Yellow Hat maintains such a calm demeanor while George wrecks his house and every project he has ever worked on. Somehow, even in the midst of destruction, he understands the curiosity that motivates George's every move and takes the time to understand this motivation and explain the reasoning behind why it's a bad idea and what a good idea would look like. While I know that I'm never going to have the calm demeanor of a cartoon character who never “actually” cleans up these messes and who never loses his job despite allowing the constant havoc wreaking caused by his monkey, I can pick up on his ability to explain rather than yell; to treat my littles like the small humans they are, rather than miniature adults who ought to know better than to make and leave a mess while figuring something out. So, as I walk into the kitchen only to discover open cabinets and milk and food spilled all over the counters and floors, the trio having disappeared from sight, I channel my inner Man-In-The-Yellow-Hat, call out a loud “BOYS!” and then hand my monkeys the sponge and towels to help clean up while I give them some pointers for how to make a smaller mess the next time they decide to flex their independence and get their own snacks.
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1/23/2019 0 Comments SchoolDazeSchool day mornings are the worst. The whining, the lunch making, the inability to find necessary school items that are literally in front of their faces. I usually spend 78 minutes of the morning getting the boys ready for school, leaving me with a cool 12 minutes to throw on some *hopefully* clean, professional looking clothes and gulp down a cup of hot coffee. This morning was no different. All was going fairly smoothly, and with five minutes left to leave the house, I have all three dressed and packed up, until the moment came that I insisted Little wear a coat in the 4 degree weather. Cue the tears. "But a coat is TOO BUMPY!" he shouts, as I struggle to forcibly put a coat on his stiff arms. "If you get frostbite, your arms will FALL OFF!" I shout back, to no avail. I consider finding pictures of frostbitten appendages on my phone to scare him into winter clothing but the clock is ticking. Instead, as he wails and flails, I kiss Tiny goodbye, carry Little's boneless body to the car and attempt to position his now writhing chest into the proper car seat position. With one hand holding him down, I swiftly buckle him in and pull the tighten cord before he can buck out of his seat again. The whimpering from Little evolves into full fledged screams as I buckle Big into his seat as well. I check my watch: 6:58am. I have no doubts that the neighbors can now hear Little's wails of despair and subversively check for lights next door and across the street, hoping desperately that we get out of the driveway before they realize the half human howls are coming from our house. I close the door, hop in the driver's seat and peel out of the driveway. I hit the gas, hoping that we beat the bus that occasionally slows our progress. Little's screams have now devolved into non sensical whining and screeches. Big, ever the peacemaker, calls out from the back, "But I'm not crying!" I smile at him in the rearview mirror. Gold star for you, buddy. The only thing worse than one crying tyrant is two crying tyrants. Upon hearing Big's proclamation, Little just increases the volume of his cries. It's only 7:02am and my ears have had enough. We pull into the school parking lot and the minute I unbuckle Little, he pulls off his coat, stomps his foot, and stares defiantly at me. I consider abandoning him in the car as we lock eyes. Tick, tick, goes the clock. Finally, I relent and wrap his coat around his body and carry him into school, while Big grabs my pocket and trails behind. Once inside, the school staff stare silently at the mixture of snot and tears that now cover Little's face as he sniffles his way down the hallway. I check my pockets for tissues but come up empty, so instead use my gloves to wipe away the sludge and make his face more presentable. I make a note to wash my gloves when I get home, knowing full well that I will forget to do it. As I get the two settled in, and explain Little's red face away for the daily "health check", I blow hugs and kisses from the window and, feeling as though I've already worked an 8 hour shift, head out to my day job. 1/13/2019 0 Comments AffirmationsIt has been a long, tiring week of early mornings and late evenings with the trio. As darkness falls, so too falls the reign of tyranny over the dwelling. The despots that rule become the small snugglers that I once carried, and power shifts as they plead with me to lay down and begin our nightly ritual. Each must have a snuggle, a song and their affirmations - my fervent hopes in planting the seeds of who they will grow to become. As I feel each warm body next to mine, my desperation and frustrations from the day melt away, and I feel blessed to work for this tiny kingdom and its maniacal monarchs.
This night, I lay next to Little and repeat his nightly affirmations, "You are brave; You are strong; You are kind; You are happy; You are smart; You are silly; You are good; You are loved, always and forever." He turns his small head toward mine and tells me that he, too, has affirmations for me. I breathe in the clean smells of his freshly shampooed head, envisioning the messy bathroom I still need to clean, and stay a moment longer to hear them. "You are huggable; You are snuggable; You are Kissable; You are the warmest mama ever." These words followed by the tight embrace of his tiny arms. As he chokes me with his loving hug, and I hear Tiny and Big calling for me, I smile in the knowledge that, in their eyes, tomorrow's tears and tantrums and trials and demands will be met by the warmest mama ever - even if my heart is feeling frayed and frustrated and my voice betrays it. At the end of the day, despite the failings that come from being pulled in too many directions by too many demands, love is enough to lift the walls of imprisonment and fill up my cup when it empties. 1/4/2019 0 Comments karmaTo start the new year right, I've instituted a new form of restorative justice into our lives. It's called "Karma's a B*tch" and so far, it appears to be working. Here's how it goes down: Little hits Big with a drumstick. Five minutes later, Little whacks himself in the face with the drumstick as it wildly bounces back from a particularly fierce pound. Little cries about the drumstick whack. I shrug my shoulders and give him a singlularly worded consolation, "Karma."
Tiny steals Little's unicorn stuffy and hides it as Little cries for Sparkle (the unicorn)'s return. Tiny laughs mercilessly while Little cries, and refuses to give up his hiding spot. The wrestling match that ensues over Sparkle's disappearance bleeds into dining room and knocks into the table. Moments later, Tiny's 657 million piece Lego Batman rig rolls off the dining room table, smashing into it's original 657 million pieces (minus the 2 that rolled into the air duct). Cue Tiny's wails of sheer horror, and my nonchalant shrug. "That's karma, buddy." How is it working, you ask? Well, hopefully, it's teaching my pint sized overlords that kindness matters and you get back from the universe what you give out. Mostly, though, its given me intense satisfaction of justice served without having to serve any actual justice. Thanks, karma! Keep up the good work! 6/11/2018 1 Comment Crusts for dinnerAfter a long day out, the last thing I look forward to is the chaos of scrapping together a quick dinner that all will eat. Heat, exhaustion, an overabundance of sugar and under-abundance of anything healthful results in a rare combination in the trio. They waffle from super happy and excited retelling the adventures of our day to hysterical, nonsensical maniacs within seconds. I choose my words carefully as we unload the car, yet make the fatal mistake of asking the trio what they want for supper. Obviously, I receive three separate answers, and with the three on edge, I make the undesirable choice of making three different meals.
I begin by reheating chicken nuggets for Tiny as he runs circles around the house, screaming at the top of his lungs. As I set his meal in front of him, he happily exclaims that he is SO hungry that he would eat ANYTHING. I know this not to be true and, evidenced by his actions moments later when I set Little's toasted cheese sandwich on the table, he is all talk. Tiny has an aversion to cheese that I haven't seen since my own vomit inducing aversion to ketchup as a child (the smell of the stuff just sent me over the edge). The moment the toasted cheese sandwich is placed on the table, Tiny screams and runs from the table in horror. "There's CHEESE on the table!" he complains loudly to me. "I HATE cheese!" and out pour the tears as he tears around the house once more, chicken nugget grasped within his claw, crumbs flying in all directions. Little, on the hand, claps his hands in glee at the sight of the cheesy sandwich. A momentary joy. This glee is immediately followed by loud whining as he begins tearing his sandwich apart, tearfully telling me that I forgot to remove the crusts. Side note: I didn't forget. I was hoping he wouldn't notice them underneath the melted cheese. How wrong I was. As Little rips his sandwich into an undistinguishable pile of soft bread and cheese, he hands me the crusts saying, "You can eat the crusts for your dinner." Thanks kid. At this point, Big wonders aloud where his supper is, as though he is the forgotten child. "What am I going to eat??" he whines for the thousandth time. I plop his bowl of yogurt in front of him and then very clearly ask him if he wants the syrup mixed or not mixed. He opts for mixed. I wisely repeat the answer for verification and receive the go ahead to mix. Big takes one bite and then dissolves into great, big, loud wails. He DID NOT want it mixed. He wants it unmixed, immediately. My eye twitches as I reach for the syrup and pour a little extra on top. So much for coming down from his sugar high. Now, I'm just giving him sugar dinner on top of his sugar lunch. Big calms down and begins eating. Little takes tiny bird bites out of his mountain of torn bread/cheese. Tiny, still wandering around, at least continues taking bites out of his chicken nugget. I take a deep breath and enjoy the three seconds of serenity as I prepare myself a quick meal. However, eating it is another story. In prison life, for some reason, sitting down for a meal means that everyone under the age of 6 also has to poop. Little jumps up from the table and runs to the bathroom. Before I can take another bite, he is requesting my assistance in there. As he finishes up, Big decides he needs to be carried into the bathroom as well. And I need to stay there. To keep him company. As I stand awkwardly in the bathroom and keep Big company, I hear loud banging and screams coming from the kitchen. Tiny and Little are playing their own version of Ninja Warrior as they hop around the room on the chairs, counters, tables, Little chasing Tiny with his cheese. Tiny screams in horror and scrabbles to escape. Little may be the smallest of the bunch, but as he realizes his true power lay in Tiny's fear of the cheese, a maniacal light shines in his eyes and he gleefully uses this newfound power to chase his overlord. I step in just before Tiny throws a giant, hard dinosaur at Little's head and quietly - or not so quietly - tell him to get back to the table with his food. Big is calling me again. I blow a kiss to my untouched, now cold dinner sitting on the table and think that perhaps the crusts would have been a more appropriate meal for this particular evening. 5/30/2018 0 Comments For The Love Of WaterAn extended weekend may mean rest and relaxation for some, but for the imprisoned, it means extra time for chores with the "help" of small hands.
As we arrived home from the parade, I excitedly told the trio that we had a job to do expanding and mulching the garden a.k.a. "We get to use a hammer and play in the dirt!" They bought my smooth sales pitch and followed me like ducklings to the car to unload the mulch. Tiny wrestled with the first bag for a full ten minutes whilst I unloaded the rest. He then dropped it two feet from the car, announced he was "tired" and defected off to "water the trees" with the hose. The hose is dangerous territory, but I knew to pick my battles as we were mere minutes into a several hour job. Tiny's version of watering the trees involved shooting a jet of water directly at the tree's bark about 4 feet above ground level. It also involved shooting the jet setting of water directly at the soil at his feet causing dirt to fly everywhere, not excluding his face and eyes. I decided to ignore this and told him not to get himself wet knowing full well the absurdity of my statement. I handed the hammer to Little and the landscaping pins to Big to keep them interested. Over the next 30 minutes, Little proceeded to hammer everything but the garden stakes I held up while Big wandered off with the pins. Little's hammering included a bag of dirt, the fieldstone walkway, the trees and the space two inches away from my foot. I began to reconsider my choice in putting Little on hammer duty. As I shifted gears and began laying the weed guard, I tracked down Big, sitting in a pile of dirt, using the landscaping pins as tiny shovels, bending them in the process. Upon finding some pliars, re-straightening the pins and placing them in the garden, I began to hear screams of agony over by hose, as Big, Little and Tiny struggled over the control of the hose like lions fighting over the last piece of meat. I watched, helplessly, as they rolled around in the pit of mud Tiny had created while watering the trees, and wondered how I would dry out their sneakers in time for school the next day. Tiny, at the advantage by both height and weight, rose victorious from the pit, covered in dirt and proceeded to spray Big and Little without mercy. Punishment for their attempted coup to control the hose. Big and Little, bawling over the injustice, decided to unite to defeat the water dictator. Together, they ran at Tiny, knocking him over and taking control of the hose. Unbeknownst to them, this action inadvertently flipped the auto-on pin, creating a wild hose that no one could control. The three, now united in fear, ran full speed from the hose, as it unstoppably sprayed water everywhere. As I swooped in to the rescue and stood before the dripping, muddied trio, I tersely informed them that they were supposed to be "helping" me and not getting everything wet. They assured me that it was an "accident" that would never happen again. Though I had my doubts on this faulty promise, I was also soclose to finishing my garden project, thus turned a blind eye yet again to the water wastage. Little now decided he wanted to "help" again, so I handed him the zip ties to hold while I used them to attach the fencing to the stakes. Moments later, as I asked him to hand me one, he proudly showed off the zip tie animals he made by zip tying them all together, rendering them useless for my intended purpose. As my eyes made their way from zip tied animals to the current mud pit/ hose fight between Big and Tiny, I decided that a popsicle break was a necessity, both for my sanity as well as the health and safety of the tyrants. With the garden project temporarily on hold, we enjoyed our popsicles on the porch while the trio of complaints about wet clothes and muddy sneakers fell on my deaf ears. 5/21/2018 0 Comments A Fenceless PrisonThe truth about prison life is that there are no walls keeping you in. One could conceivably walk away at any moment without having to scale a fence or tunnel beneath concrete. The tyrants who rule this place are savvy in the mind tricks they employ to prevent our escape as they morph from ankle biting monkeys on steroids to sweet, doe eyed lop eared bunnies with the flip of a switch.
As one of the imprisoned, sleep is a rare commodity not often bestowed upon me. So rare, in fact, that although I "know" what sleep is, I sometimes forget the word and that it applies to me. While gone are the never ending nights of being up 8-10 times to feed someone through the haze of a half functioning brain, not a night goes by that one of the tyrants doesn't vomit; attempt to vomit; need water; have a nightmare; lose a blanket; lose a stuffy; get tangled in the sheets and/or any other assortment of troubles that causes them to demand my immediate attention between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. Often, my sleep deprived brain cannot fathom the walk back to my bedroom so I just remain in the tyrants' room, spreading out on the 1-2 feet of extra space in one of the single beds, occasionally finding a large stuffy or discarded clothing to cushion my head while someone repeatedly kicks me in the chest and face as they sleep like an egg beater next to me.
As I opened my eyes this morning, Tiny's face was about six inches from my own, tapping my forehead with a finger as he chanted, "Wake up. Wake up. Wake up." Groggily, I struggled to keep my eyes open as Little snored next to me, blissfully asleep and not subject to Tiny's preferred waking method. Fatal mistake #1: I told Tiny that it's not morning time yet to which he gleefully leaped out of bed and threw upon the shades to show me that light was indeed shining through the window, thus is WAS morning time. In the process of leaping across the beds, he landed next to Big who was humming a nonsensical tune. This turned into the first of many wrestling sessions of the day. Desperate to let Little, who is battling kennel cough for the thousandth time, continue to sleep, I forced myself from bed and ushered the two into the hallway. Fatal mistake #2: I forgot to grab Big's blue blanket before quietly exiting the room. Blue blanket is Big's necessary accessory at all times, particularly in the morning. As I turned to try to sneak back inside, Tiny and Big yelped and tumbled down the hallway, turning on the hallway light in the process and awakening the slumbering Little. Upon hearing his brothers' battle cries, Little was wide awake and refused to go back to sleep. In between barking coughs, he whinily demanded that I carry him down the hallway to which I obliged. As we walked and stepped over the rolling bodies of Tiny and Big, Little informed me that he wanted to be the first to pee. Tiny, never one to shy away from a challenge, raced past us into the bathroom, to the great dismay of Little, who immediately melted down into a puddle of Little tears. I tried to console him by telling him that he could at least go before Big, but that was no consolation prize. Second place is the first loser. Hysterically crying over the lost opportunity to urinate first, I carried his writhing body down the stairs, hoping The Enforcer remembered his ear plugs this morning. For twenty minutes, Little adamantly refused to pee, claiming he was "never going to pee again!" Worried that his bladder couldn't hold out for much longer, I desperately searched my fuzzy brain for something that would convince him to go. Finally, landing on my friend, the television, I convinced Little that he could pick our morning show, if only he would go to the bathroom first. Tiny, hearing this, launched into a diatribe about the unfairness of it all: Little picking the show. Narrowing my eyes at him, I informed him that it was his doing that caused the drama and that Little would be picking whatever show he wanted so long as he stopped crying over the bathroom situation and actually used the bathroom. Tiny, privy to my patience under sleep deprivation conditions, knew when to retreat from battle. As we settled on the couch, Little now calm but still barking like a seal, I saw my opportunity for extra shut eye and jumped on it. Until, four minutes into the show, I felt something sharp, like a pointy finger, poking my cheek and heard...."Can we have our milk now?" 12/21/2017 0 Comments Snowplay In The YardWith the cold weather and snow comes the need to layer on the clothing prior to heading out to play. Since the three tiny tyrants who rule this home are seemingly incapable of dressing themselves in the aforementioned appropriate layers, the responsibility to get all three layered up in record time falls to me.
Like the pit crew of a NASCAR race, I line up the necessary parts in the order that they must go on: socks, snowpants, boots, gloves, coat, then hat. I must simultaneously dress the trio in 30 seconds or less, lest a meltdown erupt from their throats like a tiny Mount Vesuvius, from overheating inside the house with layers designed for deep Arctic exploration. Upon waking and seeing the snow, the trio immediately begin begging to go outside. The fresh, crisp snow was beckoning even me, so I finally relented and gave in to the inevitable chore of dressing in layers. I started with the two littlest, quickly working my way in rounds as Tiny waffled between tears and threats over having to wear his snow pants out in the snow (the previous day having gotten away with wearing water shoes - no socks- out in the freezing temperatures as the snow was falling having altered his schema of what outdoor wear in wintertime actually looks like). As I rounded the corner to coats, I hit a snag in my race to the finish. The coats, with the fatal flaw of including built-in hand warmers, WOULD NOT slide over the gloves with ease. I pulled, I yanked, I sweated and swore, yet those coats defied my every action. Finally, Big, fully dressed and starting to whine, was sent outside with strict instructions NOT to leave the porch. Tiny, dressed in one boot, hat askew, and gloves, tore around the house screaming about the unfairness of being forced to wear snowpants in the snow. With one sleeve left to pull on Little, I watched as Big inevitably defied my orders and ran off the porch, the draw of the freshly fallen snow mere feet away too much for even his rule-following heart to abide by. Quickly, I yelled for backup, beckoning The Enforcer with my screams. The Enforcer appeared and reluctantly took over as I sprinted outside to catch up with Big. Tiny, clothing now completely removed, yelling after me that he would not be coming outside to play if he had to wear snowpants. About five minutes later, Little waddles out, one snowgloved hand, one hand awkwardly shoved into a handknit mitten. I shake my head , ready for the inevitable tears to come in a few minutes when the knit glove becomes soaked, wet and cold. Little, oblivious to the flaws in his sad, not-even-water-resistant mitten, dives into the snow with fervor. With that, the two littlest tyrants and I make our best snowman, snowdog and snow angels while Tiny watches from the window, unsure if his inflicted punishment of not coming outside is actually working as he designed. |
AuthorAnna Christine is a working mother of three boys. She is a teacher, writer, learner, and a fierce advocate for inclusion. Writing is her catharsis for the tough days of parenting. Her writing has appeared on ScaryMommy: Archives
January 2019
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