The atmosphere in which we wake up tends to set the mood for the rest of the day. It was Max's second day of school since Fall break, and my first day back on the school routine since I worked yesterday and was blissfully unaware of the chaos at home. I felt like I was dragging my unconscious children's bodies through quicksand, that's how slow they were moving. Except they weren't unconscious. They were loud. Max's new favorite question is, "Whatarya doin?" He probably says it 214 times a day, even when I'm not really doing anything at all.
For instance, if I move my body to the left, say three-fourths of an inch, Max will ask, "Whatarya doin?" If I get up and walk into the kitchen he will ask, "Whatarya doin?" If I saw my head off in the shower with an old razor blade, he will ask, "Whatarya doin?" So basically I have to commentate my every move. And I refer to myself in the third person, which is weird and probably a bit neurotic. It goes like this, "Mommy is getting dressed. Mommy's opening the microwave. Mommy's looking for your shoes. Mommy's scratching her nose. Mommy's peeing. Mommy's wiping. Mommy's putting Maeve in the car. No! No! Mommy is putting YOU in the car. Then Maeve. In case you are in the mood to scale our vehicle." I sometimes use advanced vocabulary so he doesn't understand certain things like climbing on top of the van. Plus, it makes me feel smart.
Along with Max's incessant questioning, there's Maeve's dramatic antics to slow progress towards preschool drop off. She's developed a defense mechanism to deal with Max's lack of physical or emotional boundaries. If he gets within 1 foot of her, she crumples to the ground, pulling her head all the way down to her toes like she's some sort of toddler transformer. And then she cries. A lot. With real tears and lip quivering.
We got to school ten minutes late, which I HATE. It makes me feel like a miserable, failure monster mama. And of course Max had to open and close every door on the way to his classroom. And I was mumbling under my breath, "HURRY UP!" while trying to maintain a casual smile and a "it's cool, no sweat" kind of attitude.
While Max was at school, I met my best friend at Playnation, this cool indoor play space. It was fun and I didn't feel like hiding in a dark abyss anymore.
I'm going to skip the part where I picked Max up from school and took him to McDonald's and let him have sweet tea, because that would be embarrassing. I didn't eat there though. I waited until we got home and had some yummy tortellini salad with green beans and olives. I wish I had just gotten a chicken sandwich. That pasta salad was my downfall. Well, technically it was the olives.
Let me paint you a picture. Max was very tired. When he gets tired, he becomes even more irrational than normal. I compare this mood to someone on the verge of a psychotic break. So here's how it went down.
I was trying to be considerate, knowing that Max loves olives, so I offered him one. At first he said, "No! I don't want owls!" He pronounces "olives" like "owls". Then he immediately changed his mind. "I want owls!!!" Maeve, as usual, was being an angel in the background somewhere.
This is one of the symptoms of preschooler psychosis: fickle decision making. I took a deep breath. "That's what I thought! Here you go," I said as I tried to put the olive in his mouth with my fork.
He immediately jerked his head away. "No!!! I want to do it!!!" This is another symptom of preschooler psychosis: fierce independence at all costs, even when it delays eating olives, a sacred act for the mentally stable Max.
"Okay, buddy. You do it." I know some of you might think I should have told him to ask nicely, but that's not a good approach with psychotic Max. Acting in a calm way is the best approach. Modeling level-headed behavior.
He ate the olive. I kind of lost track of things because Dora was asking a critical question about whether we should pick the pink or blue book to take to her sick old granny's house. And then that wretched fox started meddling. We were enraptured. Somehow I ate all the tortellini salad in my bowl. Including the rest of the olives. Just as I realized my grave error, Max looked away from Dora (she was absent-mindedly staring at us, and we remained tight lipped as usual) and said, "More owls, mommy!!"
I felt my body grow tense. I actually started to sweat with anxiety. Before I could respond, Max screamed, "NOOOO!" as if I had just stabbed Dora with my fork. Don't worry, I'd never really do that...
"I. WANT. MORE. OWLS!!!!!!!!" he screeched. He jumped off the couch and ran into the kitchen. Along the way, he grabbed a chair and pushed it towards the refrigerator.
"Max," I said in a slightly raised voice. "I'll get you another olive." There was a Tupperware full of pasta salad in the refrigerator. All could be well. Oh how futilely wrong I was.
Max demanded, "I want ALL the owls!!!!" He used all of his thirty-one pounds to open the refrigerator door.
"Just wait," I said diminutively. I imagined that my voice was about as powerful as a little gnat's flying around the kitchen. I was starting to get irritated. He was out of control. And I kept having this vision flash in my head:
It quickly became apparent that the calm, sensible mothering approach wasn't working, so I turned on my alter ego who loses her shit and screams and flaps her hands around wildly. "Max!" I yelled, "You can eat three olives then you are going upstairs to nap!"
By this point Max had gotten the Tupperware out of the fridge and was sitting on the floor with it between his legs. When I gave him the news that his olive eating minutes were limited, he bucked like a caged bull, throwing his body back on the floor, stretching out his arms and legs into stiff, tense, immovable limbs.
Getting him into bed using reason was not going to work now that the third and most serious symptom of preschooler psychosis had emerged: reckless movements of his body to thwart my goal of getting him in the bed.
He was red in the face, crying hysterically. He had dropped two olives and now the world was coming to an end. I had to physically drag Max up the stairs. He was so loud that now Maeve was whimpering in the background. "Hold you, mama," she said. As I tried not to dislocate his arm in the process of getting him to bed, he sobbed, "I...Want... ALL...The...Olives." It turned from a demand to a woeful chant.
I hate using physical force to move my child from point A to point B. I'd rather he walk like a normal human being. But we have already established that preschoolers are about as far as you can get from the word normal. And much of the time I don't even think they are human beings.
The olive talk even continued in the bed. I lay beside him, letting him pick my fingers to comfort himself. He sucked on his pacifier, eyes rolling back in his head. I was nursing Maeve in an attempt to keep her quiet. Her eyes were wide open though -- a nap was obviously not in her immediate future. Occasionally he would startle himself awake and mumble through the pacifier, "I.......wah.....aww.....da....owls."
I snuck out of the bed quickly and quietly. Maeve looked at me conspiratorially, no doubt thinking, "At last some peace and quiet!" We sat on the couch and read books for a while, then I turned on Rango, her favorite movie. I was just beginning to feel my insides unwind from the tight ball that the olive predicament had caused. I was trying to force myself to think nice, happy thoughts about Max. He really is a sweet, caring little boy. Being intense isn't the worst attribute in the world. I mean, it will probably help him to achieve great successes as an adult. And really, begging for olives is better than begging for cookies or french fries or real owls, right?
Just then, I heard a door slam upstairs. Maeve and I looked each other, fear in our eyes. It was like Nightmare on Elm Street. I thought I was awake and everything would be okay. But Freddy (aka Max) surprised me yet again. "I WANT OWLS!" Max screamed from upstairs. I clutched Maeve, thinking about a safe place to hide.
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