I’ve got four. The Four-year old (Gnat) has developed a really irritating baby-talk voice, which he uses about half the time. He can also out-stubborn rocks, and freaks out if interrupted (especially on the computer. My husband says that’s directly from him and apologizes).
The two-year-old instigates fights and then radiates cute at me to try to get out of trouble, throws food, and thinks hitting is funny. He also (does anyone here play Minecraft?) rearranges things all the time. We call him the Enderman.
The four-month-old twins are mostly pretty cute, except, you know, there’s two of them, and that complicates things immensely. I also wish they’d sleep for more than an hour at a time at night. They slept better when they were newborns. I miss it. I never thought I’d miss the first couple of weeks of any babyhood.
On the bright side, Gnat’s carrying stuffed toys around and playing Daddy to them, the Emderman cuddles and kisses everyone in the house about fifty times a day, and thinks his baby sisters are his personal teddy bears for love and affection, and the girls have started playing with toys and doing the baby happy-dance when they see me, so maybe I won’t sell them all yet.
So, what are your kids doing that’s making you nuts?
Older daughter has moved in with her boyfriend and is overfeeding her pet rats. She is 21, goes to school three states away, and responds to texts when she feels like it. Don’t try to call her, it wil go straight to voicemail.
Younger daughter is home from school for the summer. She did not find a job, but does have a non-paying internship editing website content. This means she sits around the working, playing or Skypeing on her laptop all day and night. We wish she woudl go outside to see the sun on occasion, or hang out with her peers.
My daughter is 20 months old so there are a multitude of toddler behaviors that are currently driving me insane. Mostly I wish she had an inside voice. She has the loudest voice ever. Add to this a high-pitched shriek. Fortunately she’s a relatively well-behaved child so the shriek doesn’t come out too often.
Otherwise, it’s just pretty run of the mill stuff. I find myself saying things such as:
“Stop squishing the cat!”
“We don’t run on the couch!”
“Please stop licking the carpet!”
“We don’t eat rocks!”
“Stop putting sand in your hair!”
“You dip your chicken in the barbecue sauce, not your fingers!”
And so on and so forth.
My daughter is 15 months old and she’s a pretty sweet kid. She’s stopped throwing food on the floor (PRAISE OG!), but has begun to spit out whatever she’s drinking all over her shirt. I’ve decided that it’s her problem and she’s gotta live with the wet shirts. I suspect she doesn’t notice that though.
She used to play well by herself, but not anymore. She constantly brings books and toys to me and if I have my computer, tries to grab it and bang on it. I think it’s her version of an annoying sibling taking away mommy’s attention. To a certain extent I’m happy to be reminded that playing with her is more important than reading the dope, but I also wish she’d be more independent. It seems like after reading six books and singing four songs she could go play with Little People by herself for half an hour.
Son and his girlfriend are leaving on Saturday to spend the summer hitchhiking to BC and back. I was a little stressed about it last year when he did it with friends but I’m not as worried this year. What does stress me out about it is that they’re lying to her parents. Her parents are very worried about the hitchhiking so she finally “gave in” and told them she was taking a bus to BC and would meet son there. Now they’re 22 so her parents should be letting go but damn kids, lying to them is not the way to achieve that.
Daughter is stressed while waiting to hear if she got a job with the school next year. Normally this would be a minor thing as she’d have other opportunities to work but she’ll be at their Florence campus next year so no job with the school means no job. She can live on the savings as she’s been preparing for this for over a year but job = more travel money and if she’s going to spend 8 months in Italy it would be nice if she could see more of Europe.
I have 9 year old twin girls. Everything is farting and butts. The default position for one of them is that everything is hers unless strenuously proven otherwise. Homework is a battle but they do get it done eventually. Problem is one of them is sort of a night owl and can finally settle down, focus, and do her work - and do it quite well I might add - starting at around 9:30-10pm. The other is bookish and smart and has an astonishing lack of respect for us, her parents. Her teachers always comment on her helpfulness and thoughtfulness though. Pieces of work the both of them!
2 year old - For Og’s sake, quit squashing your food in between your fingers, smearing it on the table, and tossing it on the floor! Mealtimes are awful right now.
3 year old - Get thee to a toilet. And right sharply. So tired of changing diapers for a kid that’s actually able to assist in the diaper-changing process.
5 year old - Keep your room clean. And tossing everything into your closet and shoving stuff under your bed does not equate “clean room”.
6 year old - Let the other kids select a TV show every once in awhile, please? Be nice to your little brothers!
Yes, I hear you. Our four year old has been toilet trained for over a year, and yet, every couple of days we have several accidents, because he can’t be bothered to actually interrupt what he’s doing and go pee. This makes me nuts.
My son will be two in a week. He threw an impressive, extended temper tantrum (which he rarely does) this morning because his father wanted me hold him while he made the coffee. Mama’s touch was LAVA. “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!! DADA!!!” until the full gasping hiccups thing, full sheet of tears and snot down his face, but the Dada wanted me to keep trying, so lather rinse repeat for half an hour. “NO NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!” I know they do this sort of thing at this age but it’s always a Dada day and never a Mama day, you know? It’s starting to hurt my feelings. At least he gave me a grinning flying hug goodbye when I dropped him off at daycare, after all that.
In the past, whenever you’d feed my 16-month-old son with a spoon and accidentally got some on the side of his mouth, you had enough time to get a wet paper towel and wipe it off.
Not so anymore. If he detects more than a few molecules of food in the corner of his mouth, he’s wiping it on his new shirt within .0000000001 seconds.
By apparently not liking any of the same breakfast foods I do. Ever since I got pregnant, if I have pizza, Chinese food, or a breakfast burrito for breakfast, it’s likely to come back. If I have oatmeal, which I don’t like nearly as well, I’m fine. I’m 31 weeks pregnant now.
There’s an echo in here. One of the things I did to drive my mom crazy was prefer non-traditional breakfast foods over traditional ones. She remembers when I was two, she asked me what I wanted for breakfast one morning, and I said “mixed vegetables”. She said I had to eat them, made them for me, and I ate them. I have generally preferred non-traditional breakfast foods ever since. My mom, OTOH, is the sort who goes to “breakfast served anytime” type restaurants.
The circle of life, I guess… Or maybe Mom is getting some of that wished-for revenge already.
21-year-old: Convinced his grandmother to co-sign the note for a brand new car. Okay, son, if you’re allegedly trying to save up to go back to school, payments plus insurance are gonna be a real burden. Why not do like your sister, and look for a car you can actually afford right now?
So at least the biggest girl has her finances straight, except that… she missed the payment deadline for summer classes. And if she doesn’t make up one class, I’m afraid she loses her scholarship this fall. And her relationship status on Facebook changes so fast yhat there’s a strobe effect. Leading to lots of late night phone calls and texts bemoaning how boys are mostly poopyheads.
The 14-year-old is okay, except that he pouts when I limit his computer time to anything less than 18 hours per day…
The 11-year-old is growing boobs and getting moody. Ay yi yi!
And the 2-year-old is… two. Into everything. Loud. Innocently destructive. And she takes off her diaper 26 times per day, but doesn’t want to potty train.
The 4-month-old is good. As long as she’s fed and changed regularly, she’s a happy little being…
Right now my daughter is sick. I have a policy with my kids - if you’re home because you’re sick and you’re preschool-aged or older, your sick time at home is as low key as I can make it to avoid them pretending to be sick in order to stay home. It’s effective, but bored kids mean irritated kids. Irritated kids mean irritated me. It also means that I can’t search for a job because she’s about to bounce off the walls. It sucks and I can’t wait to see her off to preschool tomorrow.
My son is driving me insane because he always has to have the last word with his sister. Yes, he’s only six, but he’s smart and he gets that there are lots of things she doesn’t understand. And, like any six year old, he just doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter how big or small the issue, he’ll try to argue with her, which doesn’t work because she’s not even three. So they bicker constantly. Drives me batshit.
And I have yet to make heads or tails of my daughter’s eating habits. She was really feverish yesterday, so I tried jello, I tried ice pops, I tried other cool stuff. Then she got her hands on the hot sauce and some apple slices and chugged down an apple and a half dipped in hot sauce in no time at all. And this morning she wanted mixed vegetables sprinkled on her pancakes. Who eats like that? Especially when they’re sick? Pregnant women maybe, but a sick kid?
Baby Crusosity is nearly 5 months and INSANELY clingy. She’s always been a mama’s girl, but recently seems to have regressed back to newborn stage and does not want to be parted from me, at all, ever. She wants to be held constantly - which isn’t easy, as she’s a big girl, weighs 21lb already - and seems to require constant entertainment. Just this morning in order to have a badly-needed shower I had to sit her in the bathroom on the bath mat and keep up a running commentary to distract her from the injustice that was her not being held, and even then she still grizzled. Getting dressed involved keeping up a song and dance act whilst attempting to put clothes on and keep her from yelling.
Dad is apparently persona non grata. Attempts to have him put her to bed the other night resulted in 20 minutes of screaming, combined with attempts to hit him with her tiny fists. When my nerves could take no more I took her off him to find her drenched with sweat and with tears streaming down her face. I felt like the worst mother in the world.
I’m trying to tell myself that it’s just a phase, and to resign myself to have no life of my own right now, on the grounds that in not so many years time she’ll be slamming out of the house yelling that she hates me, and I’ll long for the days when all she needed to make her happy was me. But it’s bloody exhausting, nonetheless.
I had to break apart an hour-long on and off fight because Gnat and the Enderman kept wanting the same pieces of Duplo. We have a huge container of Duplo, but nooooo, they can’t possibly go get a different piece- it has to be what brother is using.
And TomKittne (also known as the Enderman) broke his brother’s sonic screwdriver today, so there were tears all round. Argh.
Right now the girls are upstairs having separation anxiety because they’ve been put to bed and I’m not sleeping with them. Go to sleep, dammit!
Eldest limey got married on Saturday, but my basement is still full of toasters/blenders/bitsandpieces of wedding crap. Middle limey moved out a month ago, and hasn’t cleaned out her bedroom yet. I’m about to get a shovel and start throwing stuff out on the driveway.
My 11 y/o knows everything in the world. Don’t believe me? Just ask him. He is interested in talking to you… for a long while. In fact, have a seat, you are going to be here all day. He would like to share this information with you one piece at a time. Was that a breath between words? Can’t have that! He would also like to talk to you - at length - about the intricacies of the games he wants to play on the Wii or Kindle. Again, bring a sack lunch. And that movie you are watching together? Don’t stress yourself paying attention, because after each scene where, let us say, Bob is fired from his job, my son will turn to you in approximately one minute and say “Hey mom, remember when we saw Bob lose his job?” except it will be verbatim, with matching inflections and emotion. It is frankly a little eerie.
The seven year old would like for you to cater to his every whim*. Also, not wear clothes. Getting him to stay clothed has become a real struggle. I think he is hiding a little Superman phone booth somewhere because I can look at him fully clothed and blink and he is in his underwear. Also he has decided it is hilarious to fart and stick his head between his legs to smell it. Farts everywhere, farts all the time.
And by god these children have the LOUDEST SPEAKING VOICES EVER. It is not just them! I am a camp leader this week for day camp and I swear I have been yelled at by 100 children every day. “MS SHELLIBEAN CAN YOU HELP ME OPEN MY DRINK?” “Yes buddy, say it don’t yell it.” “OK THANKYOUDOYOULIKEPOKEMAN MS SHELLIBEAN BECAUSEIDOANDWHOISYOURFAVORIE?”
Ahhhhh!!!
*But sweet baby has been getting better because this summer we are working on PROJECT: MOM IS NOT YOUR MAID and he has been doing great. In fact, he told me that for dinner “Self made sandwiches taste better.”
Yay for P:MINYM! We are also trying that one out here in the Bellum household. I’ve begun to withhold meals until the downstairs is picked up and cleaned of toys and clutter. After about a week of this treatment, my children have begun to meekly pick up their toys when they see Mom head into the kitchen to fix dinner.
