A Perfectly Horrid Day/LONG but so was the day...

[Guest guest]

Apologies to Grace for being off line most of the day but nothing I would have

typed would have been polite. Yesterday was simply awful.

First of all, my lovely Mexican student has returned to Mexico. Her visa was up

or something. So I felt very bad because my house was a wreck and today is St.

Day and we decorate our tree and I HATE to decorate a tree amidst a

mess. It just seems wrong. So I decided to clean yesterday and I did a pretty

good job which is nice. But my children were appalling ALL DAY LONG, possibly

due to my reduced attention to them.

Enrique totally refused to attend his doctor's appointment in the morning. Now

actually this was a bit of a plus as I used the unnecessary (I had talked with

his doctor on the phone for quite a while the day before) appointment as

leverage to get him to agree to try Risperidal again, although he did say a

trifle ominously that if he felt worse this time than he did last (he suffered

from sleepiness and just quit it last time; now we know that that is a normal

side effect that goes away), then he would kill me. I assumed he was not being

precise in his speech.

So at least this morning my house looks pretty good; I need to make beds, damp

mop some of the floors (didn't get to that yesterday) and do a load of dishes

and try to repair the minor Robbie/Putter/Sophie damages.

However was in a terrible terrible mood yesterday. He complained all

day and hit people (not me and not Enrique, but mainly Sophie) and then Enrique

would threaten to hit because he was complaining. I don't believe

Enrique ever actually hit anyone although he did throw a book once. Enrique

feels that no one should feel unhappy or complain except for Enrique because

listening to others complaining upsets Enrique. screamed and screamed

at me that I love Enrique better and that I never do anything about him. I

pointed out all the medications, and therapies and general reading that I do in

an effort (unsuccessful as yet, I grant you) to make Enrique act like a decent

caring human being. " Well, " screamed , " Why don't you talk to him or

something. You love him better. "

Sigh. I talk to Enrique all the time and I talk to him about mistreating his

siblings and I talk to him about how he should behave. Endlessly. And I tend to

feel it is the least successful thing I do with him. Some of what

objects to is pretty normal sibling stuff actually; he is not the first sibling

to find his older teenaged brother obnoxious and irritating. Enrique is quite a

tease and , unfortunately, is the perfect teasing foil. But none of

this meant anything to in his rage; he told me that he hated me over

and over again.

Now today is St. Day, as I have said, and part of our celebration is to

put out shoes with carrots in them the night before and then the children wake

up to find chocolate coins in their shoes. I took Robbie and Putter with me to

buy the chocolate coins and they were very bad in the candy store. Then I took

Robbie and Putter with me to buy the tree and they loved doing that. Putter

especially was thrilled. I kept the tree in the car when I got home because

Sophie was standing at the back door crying. I had hoped to beat her home from

school but she beat me by about two minutes and she had already had a fight with

. I did not want Sophie to see the tree because supposedly St.

brings it to our house and a few days ago Sophie said to me, " I don't

believe in the tooth fairy and I don't believe in Santa Claus but I know St.

NIcholas is real because the carrots are always gone when our candy comes and

they aren't in the trash because I looked and I don't think you would eat that

many carrots (true! and I put the discarded carrots in bag and put them in our

big trash can) so St. is the only explanation. I did not want to

destroy her innocent belief so I felt it was very important to keep the tree

from her.

knew all about this and so, to help out me and to keep Sophie happy in

her innocent childish beliefs, he hit her when she tried to meet me in the

garage which is why she was crying. Someone, I guess me, needs to have a long

talk with discussing why the ends don't justify the means, but,

believe me, yesterday was NOT the day to do it on. I did tell him not to hit

Sophie and he said to me, " Yeah, you love her better. "

On towards dinner time which was very confusing because Enrique fixed himself a

box of rice a roni quite late and ate the entire thing so I figured he would

hardly want dinner. Sophie told me that she was hungry and wanted me to cook

her dinner (it was four thirty and we eat around six thirty or seven). I was

not prepared to do that at that time and she would not get herself anything to

eat so she went on getting hungrier and hungrier (we had lots of easy to prepare

reasonably healthy snack foods in the kitchen too)

Enrique had a woman from church coming over to give him communion. I planned to

discuss just buying pizza (because I was tired after all my cleaning efforts) or

something after she left and I meant to poll the kids on what they wanted to

eat. But, while the nice church lady was there, Sophie decided to scream and

scream at me that she was hungry and why wouldn't I feed her. It was very

embarrassing. , very embarrassed, came into the room I was in with the

little ones and Sophie and said that you could hear Sophie shouting, " Why won't

you feed me? I am so hungry. Please feed me, " from the living room. And then,

because Sophie was being so loud, and totally unexpected by me, he hit her.

Oddly enough this did not seem to make her quieter (DUH!) and she then began

shouting " Ouch, Ouch, Oh please don't hit me, " or something. I figure I'll be

hearing from CPS today about why I don't feed my kid and why I beat her up.

Double sigh.

Finally Sophie went and fixed herself a waffle, something which had been

available to her the entire time she was screaming at me.

Then we spent about an hour just generally fighting and arguing about what to

eat. Finally, very late, we went to get pizza. Normally I would have had it

delivered but we needed some drinks (HA! I needed a good stiff drink, but

really it was other drinks that we went in search of) Sophie and Enrique stayed

behind. Putter got into the car and I took the tree out of the car to put it

behind the house so Sophie would not see it. But apparently Putter had decided

that travelling with a tree in the car was the new status quo and he began

screaming " Tree! Tree! " . I actually tried to put the tree back in but Robbie,

who had sat next to it and been pricked by it shouted, " No tree, no tree, " and

anyway I couldn't get it back in. So I strapped struggling Putter into his

carseat and strapped Robbie in and then pulled the tree to its outside location.

Then got in after yelling at Sophie not to come near the garage, and

we drove off.

Then it turned out that Putter had brought with him a model of a Stealth plane

that is 's. It is not really a toy; it has a display holder and it

falls apart if you play with it at all. Naturally it kept falling apart on the

drive and we kept having to put it back together while shouted that

Putter just got to ruin his stuff and nothing was safe from him and I drove on

grimly to get the pizzas.

Robbie screamed non-stop because I hadn't put his shoes on in the confusion

about the tree. Putter screamed non-stop because of the tree and the plane

falling apart. screamed that no one cared about him and he couldn't

stand the noise. I periodically screamed that I was not thrilled about any of

this either and had seen what Putter had done to my jewelry over the

course of a few years? " Great, " said , " You love him better. "

We picked up the pizza, still screaming (well, us, not the pizza), and drove

home although I had to make a brief stop at a convenience store for the drinks.

Putter was pleased and he escaped from his carseat to join me in the store; I

did not prevent him (I would have left Robbie and Putter in the car to be

watched by as I can see the car from the store anyway) Putter had a

large candy selection in mind and I was at the point of Anything To Keep Him

Quiet. And it worked. So only Robbie was screaming when I got home.

Robbie's screaming set off Enrique who followed me around the house shouting

that Robbie had to stop crying and I kept suggesting that Enrique leave but

Enrique said he couldn't leave until Robbie stopped screaming. Finally, it

turned out that Power Puff Girls were coming on television and Robbie loves them

(so do I now!) and he toddled off to watch his favorite show.

Enrique went to eat, and then we discovered that they had given him no

breadsticks (he was having spaghetti with breadsticks), well, strictly speaking

they had given him two breadsticks and one had fallen out on the floor of the

car and one was being eaten by Sophie who brightly and cheerfully offered it to

Enrique. " I only had one bite, " she told him.

Yes, yes, she is still alive, he didn't even hit her. I managed to prevent any

further Sophie Violence from occurring but, honestly, I was tempted to do Sophie

violence myself. People with OCD do not eat breadsticks that others have gnawed

on nor do they eat breadsticks from the floor of the car, and, considering the

state of the floor of my van, I can't really blame Enrique.

Enrique would not eat his spaghetti without breadsticks and he followed me

around moaning and groaning which subtracted seriously from my own enjoyment of

dinner. Finally, I decided to order some breadsticks for delivery (NO WAY was I

going out in the car again) and this was done. Alas, they take a eight dollar

minimum on delivery so I had to order THIRTY breadsticks. No doubt I should not

have allowed him a reward for being horrible, but I was beyond caring at that

point.

And breadsticks are very popular in our house and I don't doubt that they will

be eaten.

Of course, Enrique had to wait thirty minutes for the delivery but basically

things were okay. Finally everyone was fed (Sophie, the girl who was starving

to death, ate one tiny piece of her tiny personal pan pizza.) We did our Advent

wreath -- Putter, without any prompting, took down the #5 box on his Advent

calendar -- and read our story and things settled down.

Finally bedtime. I was having a chat with Sophie who lay beside me in bed. We

were talking about the horrors of the day and I said, forgetting who I was

talking to, " Oh, and the way Putter acted when I took the tree out of the

car... " " What? " asked Sophie and I suddenly realized my gaffe. " Oh, nothing, "

I said quickly. " Tree? " said Sophie, and then, " Mama, I am so sleepy. I just

didn't hear what you said. "

Innocence is ended. Silly Mama.

Salli