Stalking the Stacks with Library Lil
*Stalking the Stacks with Library Lil* |
2008-04-25 By all accounts it has not been a great day. It started pretty typically of any day where the ladies have to be woken up. You see, Amy wakes up quickly, Emily does not. So usually I wake up Amy first, snuggle with her a bit, send her off to the bathroom and then work on getting Emily going. Except any snuggling with Emily is interpreted by Amy as pure hatred of Amy, and so is not tolerated. So we start off just about every morning with jealousy. Today surprisingly, I managed to convince Amy that I still did love her, even if Emily needed a snuggle.Then came breakfast. Lately, the ladies are taking FORever with their food. They eat--usually an appropriate amount, but it takes a long time. They must chit chat and tell stories and they aren't good multi-taskers. Well--breakfast started at 7:45 with toast for Emily and a sandwich for Amy. Big glass of milk for both. By 8:20 Amy had eaten most of her breakfast and had drank (drunk) all of her milk. The rule is that you must drink your milk at breakfast and lunch and then at supper, you get something fun to drink (lemonade, juice, chocolate milk--water even if you want). Amy had also taken time out to poop, but that's not an essential to the story except that as mommy blogger I feel that if there is poop it should be mentioned. Emily had eaten nothing. She had drank (drunk whatEVER) nothing. She had taken her allergy meds and that's it. Well, I told her that she needed to drink her milk or she'd be having milk for dinner, and told her she had five minutes. (actually I said this at 8:12ish) She responded by melting into a big puddle and screaming and crying about how I was hurting her feelings. Really? Her feelings? This is actually her most common complaint, if we correct her, if we tell her to do something--in accordance with well known house rules, we're hurting her feelings. She lets us know by bursting into tears and screaming about why can't people be nice to her. Now, I came from a home, where my feelings really were hurt on purpose by not just my father, but by his whole family. My paternal grandmother told me at age 12 that I looked like a whore (I'd just gotten a perm). Both my father and my step-mother had called me a bitch or a selfish bitch or just selfish on so many occasions that I still sometimes hear their voices calling me those things in response to some triggers. So as you might expect I really have a hard time with the whole feelings hurt defense. I understand that she doesn't like to be told she's wrong. I get that she wants to do things in her own time and in her own way. But the over the top reaction to what seem to be normal things, drives me absolutely crazy. I have a really really hard time checking my frustration and getting on with whatever I need her to do. Today, this morning, it wore me out. She screamed from about 8:12 until 8:45 when we were finally in the car headed for school. Of course the screaming made things worse. She's on for milk at supper because I followed through. She sat in her nightgown until I told her that she would go to school in her nightgown if she didn't get dressed. She then took off her nightgown and sat and screamed in her underwear. Then preschool called. My inner voice said no no no please don't ask me to co-op please. They wanted MIL ("selfish bitch," says the voice in my head, "all you think about is yourself,"). I called MIL and she was happy to do it ("you are so selfish, " says my stepmother's voice). I told Emily that if I had to dress her, I would treat it as if she were a baby and I would pick her clothes and guess what--it wouldn't be the purple pants and blue shirt she had picked. I was so angry. I wanted to scream back. I wanted to hit. I wanted to cry. I wanted to punish her so much. And yet, I didn't. |
