Never break your own rules

April 20, 2011 by 30fingersandtoes 5 Comments

My life is exactly like the movie “Groundhog Day”. Every day is the same. I get up, get ready. Then I go and open Isabelle’s door. She’s usually been up for some time just play quietly. Isabelle says the same thing to me every morning, “I want to open the twins door Mommy!!” She says this to me every day as if I might have forgotten overnight. I don’t even acknowlege her anymore when she says it. She opens the door, Maddy crawls out of her bed and I get Aidan out of his crib. Thankfully the twins say something different every time we open the door! Then we go to my room to dress everyone and Isabelle usually heads to the potty. Some days she goes without problem, other morning she tells me she doesn’t like the potty and we have a disagreement over whether or not she is going to use it. I win every time. While dressing everyone, all three are asking for their vitamins. Some days we cannot get dressed until we’ve had our vitamins. Whatever, so long as they get dressed I don’t care when they have them.

Next we go down stairs. And every morning they have to argue over who is going to go first down the stairs. I’ve learned to ignore this fight as well. I simply remind them that there is no pushing at the top of the stairs and tell them to come down when they’ve sorted it out.

Anyways, you see how my typical day goes…very repetitive. I’ve done this because it keeps the chaos to a minimum. I try not to break my own rules about things because life with 3 littles ones is utter chaos and I like to live at my house and not in the Psych ward at the hosptial.

So the other morning it seemed as if we were going to have a nice day. It was cool, but the sun was out and there was no wind as far as I could tell. I usually take the kids out an hour before lunch on cooler days since they can’t last much longer than an hour. However something about that day had me very close to breaking my own rule and going out earlier. That was until Isabelle came over and asked really nicely to play with her Play Doh’s. I thought that sounded like a great idea. So all three got very excited when I started taking out the Play Doh and putting everything they needed at the kitchen table to play for a little while. Play Doh time didn’t last as long as I had expected however. I think 15 minutes went by and the kids said enough. So I packed it all back up and decided that I would track down a pair of socks for each of them and get them ready to go outside.

So I dress the kids and out we go. Sun still out, wind non existent, birds chirping, kids playing. Everything is good. Then Isabelle asks if we can go for a walk. Sure, great idea. We will take our usual trip around the block. Hey, we will even bring the dog because that worked out really well the other day! Jersey is still getting over Max not being around so she could use some time out. So we head down the driveway and get about 5 houses down the street before Aidan decides he’s had enough. I wait for Aidan and try to convince him to keep going and he replies to me “No!” I ask Aidan if he will at least go to the mailbox with us and then we will come back home and play. I think Aidan really just wanted to play with his truck and not walk. So he agrees. We all cross the street and get the mail. We cross back and head back to the house, which is not impressing Isabelle who wanted to go for a walk. I tell her that we can play with the ride-on toys out on the driveway since *I* had driven to work that day. She seemed okay with this idea.

So there we all were, out front on the driveway playing with Aidan’s big ride on dump truck, Isabelle had the corn-poper ride on toy and Maddy had the trike. And they were taking their various toys up and down the sidewalk. Aidan took of so far down the sidewalk that I had to try several times to get his attention to come back. Of course he replies to me “NO!” I figured since they were walking so well with their toys, perhaps, just maybe this one time I would let them go down the street with their toys. This is a Mommy rule of mine, never, ever, everrrrrrrrrr take toys with us on a walk.

From our house the kids went down the street to the main road called Derry. I thought okay, this is it, we turn back here because we are literally just down the street. But the kids were wanting to keep going. Something in my brain said “don’t do it Leanne, you will regret this.”
So I said to the kids that we were going to turn around here and go home. I was immediately given “awhhhhhs.” “Please Mommy, walk!?” Again I know that I should be saying no, but they were doing so well and having so much fun right, who could say no to that?

On we went. When we got to the opening in the fence to get back on to Edwards Ave sidewalk, we turned and kept walking down the street. Aidan decided that he was done pushing his toy and would not move an inch until his sister got off the trike and let him have a go. It was right about this time I heard a little voice in my head say “I told you so!!” And this is where our nice little walk went seriously downhill very quickly. I asked Isabelle if she would push Aidan’s truck and give Aidan the other push toy. Isabelle agreed. Aidan however was still not happy with this. He wanted the trike. However, I did not want Aidan to have the trike because he is not good at keeping his feet on the bar for kids who can’t peddle yet. Also Aidan thinks it to be absolutely hilarious to steer the trike like a drunken midget while I have to try to push him in a straight line.

I cave, I ask Madeline if she would please walk and push the toy so that Aidan could have a turn at the trike. At first Madeline is more than happy to let Aidan have a turn. That happiness lasted all of 15 seconds. Aidan was happy to be on the trike steering like a drunken midget. However Madeline was now refusing to walk nevermind even pushing the toy she was not going to do anything. She sat down and cried and when I told her it was time to stand up so we could walk home, she then lay down on the sidewalk and cried even louder.

So let’s recap here folks. I have 3 kids (1having an all out meltdown), with 3 toys and a dog. Ahhh, I bet you all forgot about the dog! She will have a role very soon in this story.

 I pick Maddy up off the ground, take her by the arm with my left hand.  Pick up the push toy with my right, which is also holding the dog leash, and which is also trying to keep the drunken midget going in a straight line.  The dog is now spazing out because she’s getting bonked regularly by this stupid toy I have to carry.  Madeline is screaming at the top of her little lungs because I’m “walking” her down the street.  We pass some lady and her two kids and she gives me this look of pitty and I tell her to shove that where the sun don’t shine….in my head of course.  I don’t need a pitty look, I just need to get home.  What am I supposed to do with three kids, three toys and  a dog!  As I wait for this lady and her kids to pass me, Jersey managed to take this nano second to drop a huge giant poop on someone’s lawn.  There it is, thank you Jersey!  You just made my day.  This is the same dog who I made sure had a poop before we left for the walk because we weren’t going far, we were just going down the street!!!!!!!  I have to leave the poop because I have no bags, but more importantly, I’ve got a screaming child, and two other kids with toys and I’m carrying a toy and now I’m giving shit to the dog that just shit!  I can only imagine what this would have looked like to someone passing by or watching us from a window in one of the houses.  We cross the street, I continue to help Madeline walk home because if I let go she will just drop to the ground and cry.  Guess who patience went off in another direction, that’s right mine.  We get to our drive way, I tell the kids they can play for  few more minutes, Madeline lays down and continues to cry on the front lawn.  I let her cry for a few more minutes before picking her up and settling her down. 

What does all of this mean?  Leanne will never break one of her Mommy rules agian, well at least not for the rest of this week maybe.  Some rules are meant to be broken and then there are some that just aren’t.  Lesson learned.