Sweet Revenge

TwinBoyA had been the child who makes me question my competency as a mother. Since he was a crawling baby, he's attempted to wrest control of this family from me. He's a scowler and when he was about two years old, he literally growled at church people who said hello to him on Sunday mornings. He's always been touchy and moody and prickly. I swear he has the soul of a hormonal teenage girl.

A couple of years ago, I was helping him with homework and he grew more and more angry with me, rather than with the complicated multiplication problems. I grew exasperated with him and things were not going well. Then he threw himself to the floor. (We were in the living room, so it was a small gesture, really.) Saved by the bell! The phone rang.

When I returned to the math torture, he handed me a small folded piece of notebook paper. Inside, it said (in really horrible handwriting), "WHY ARE YOU SO MEAN?! YOU ARE THE WORST MOM IN THE WORLD!" I read it, looked him in the eye, raised my eyebrows and then said, "You forgot to say I hate you."

He blinked and sheepishly handed me a second folded note. I opened it to find the words scrawled in dark pencil, "I HATE YOU!"

I am a horrible mother, because I giggled, chortled, guffawed, even--which made him burrow under the couch cushions and holler.

He has never been an "easy" child. He can be delightful and he says really hilarious things (usually unintentionally) and he is a great reader and has a shockingly large vocabulary. But he is quirky and strong-willed and raises his lip at me in an Elvis grimace when he's mad at me. Which is often.

So, here's where I get revenge: His sister, the practically-2-year-old Babygirl calls him "Elmo" (which is obviously not his name) and she demands that he "rocky-rocky" with her. No one else will do. She stands and screams "ELMO! ROCKY-ROCKY!" and will not stop shrieking until he complies with her wishes. She wants him--and him only--to read books with her. If he walks away, she screeches, "ELMO! COME BACK!" She has become a tyrant.

He complains to me and I just shrug. Sometimes, you've just got to let the little ones do the dirty work. Revenge is sweet.

(p.s. After I posted last night's dull post, I casually used that handy-dandy button up there to confirm that, yes, there are more dreadful blogs than good ones out there in cyberspace. I don't think I've ever found a good blog that way--and then--ACK! A virus started to download itself on my computer and I sat helplessly and tried to "X" out the box and then suddenly, McAfee swooped in and rescued me by annihilating that virus. Boy, did that scare me! Anyway, I will not be using that button anymore and I'm warning you, if you want to find a good blog, do what I do-- follow the trail on blogrolls! No more "next blog" for me!)