My worst moments with Joey would definitely have to be times that I yelled at him out of anger and frustration. When the look on your two year old's face is one of terror and you know they're suddenly scared of you? Ya, that's gotta be the worst most sickening feeling in the world. Oops. Didn't deal with that one right. (I say two year old because I don't think I've freaked about three year old Joey's behavior nearly as much as two year old Joey's behavior because two year old Joey drove me to the brink of insanity at times.)
I think something that our generation as parents leans toward doing in these situations is something that our parents generation leaned away from: apologizing for our outburst of anger and reassuring our love with a hug and letting the child know that they're a good child. Their behavior was bad, but they are good. This has been my saving grace, and honestly I think that these admissions of wrong-doing and reassurance of love are part of the reason why Joey is such an incredible kid. He always amazes me with his graciousness and how free he is to tell me how much he loves me.
Anytime I've said we're going to do something and we run out of time, I say, "I'm really sorry, Joey. We don't have time to go for a scooter ride. We grocery shopped longer than I thought we would." (for example) and his response is always, "It's okay mommy. Don't worry! We can go home and play cars and maybe next time we can scooter. It's okay. I love you."
I don't know if I wrote the train track story on here, but one day I found a great train set on a buy and sell group on Facebook and the woman said I could come pick it up the following morning. I showed Joey the train set that night about a thousand times and he was so excited to go pick it up in the morning. Right when he woke up he said, "This morning is a big day, mommy! We're going to get my new train set!" I was really excited for him. We went to the woman's house at the appointed time. No answer. I phoned her three times. Finally, as we were leaving, she phoned me back and said that she had sold it to a friend. I was so mad. I told her, "Well, I've got one crushed little boy in the car." and hung up. I explained to Joey what had happened and that sometimes people are unkind and don't tell the truth and I was really sorry, but we wouldn't be getting the train set because someone else had bought it first. HE SAID, "But, mommy? That's good! That means that someone else who didn't have a train set has one now! We don't have to worry. It's okay!" Wahhh he's so sweet.
Anyway - that's my little shpeel on how much I love my kid.
I was gonna write about the insane phenomenon of mothers intuition, but I'm running out of time, so I'll save that for another day.
A couple of new things:
Yesterday I got a phone call about the awesome place at Rivermark and it got leased somehow yesterday. So, no dream place for me. Gonna stay here at my no-AC, no washer dryer, silverfish, smelly apartment for another 12 long months. Did I mention someone got robbed at gunpoint here at the laundry room right by our apartment. Yup. Did I mention this place isn't even cheap? It's 2500/month. Soo, I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon moping while the kids were sleeping. I was crying and feeling sorry for myself, so I figured I'd better start doing something before I got too upset, so for two hours while the kids slept, I did a pretty useless project that Joey was thrilled about, and I'm actually also thrilled about. He has this hand-me-down book called Pirate Pete and there are all these little things with tabs on them that you can stick into the story to make it different every time. Well, since it was a hand-me-down, it's missing a bunch of the pictures.
I drew them. I cut them out. I glued cardboard backs on them all. When the kids woke up, Joey and Frankie helped me colour them, and today while they're napping, Stuart and I are going to laminate them to use in the book.
The end!
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