I had two great tasks to complete today and neither was accomplished. First, I wanted to procure window treatments for my kitchen window. It's huge and wide and it's been four years of feeling like somebody's watching me do the dishes. And you know what? In scary movies, someone really IS watching them wash the dishes. Knowing my luck, my life is a scary movie, and it's all been leading up to that moment.
So after a LOT of Facebook discussion (shout-out to my FB friends, thank you!), I was all set to hop in the car with Noah for an "adventure" to Home Depot and JoAnn Fabrics. Noah was all set, too, and then Joey's school called and said that he was sick. "Complaining that his stomach is upset," is what they said. Can't mess with that, especially not with Joey, who has been a refluxer since birth and throws up when he is totally healthy. To Noah's horrid resentment, we cancelled our adventure and I went to get Joey (with a bucket in the backseat).
Joey was confined to what we call The Sick Chair, which is the best TV seat in the house. This makes up for the fact that the sick person can't leave it except to use the bathroom. I find that little boys don't like resting even when they need it the absolute most, so I made up a scary Mommy Rule that they are basically in Sick Jail until I say otherwise. Laugh all you want, but it really works. Joey rested all day, and, incidentally, was completely fine and probably shouldn't have left school at all. But again, you just can't mess around with "Upset Stomach." Nobody wants to be the mom who made her kid stay, only to puke all over everyone. As a teacher, I also emphasize, DON'T BE THAT MOM.
During this period of extreme rest, an episode of Franklin came on where I didn't want to kill the Beaver character, so that was a plus. Franklin and his pretty terrific best friend Bear end up building a cardboard submarine, and BINGO! there you have my second task for the day. In our basement we have about a hundred giant cardboard boxes from online shopping at Christmas and because we, at one point, believed we were moving.
I said, "I can totally build you guys a submarine!"
Why did I say that? Why did I say that. I don't know.
In a nutshell, the submarine DIDN'T get done because, well, Noah is Noah.
Oh, Noah.
But, on the up-side of everything, I completely won a major battle on behalf of mommies everywhere today, even aside from Angry Birds. At dinnertime, Noah turned his nose up at my cooking. His face crumpled in disgust and he scrunched his eyes shut and squealed (like a green pig): "I won't eat it I won't eat it I won't eat you can't make me you can't make me it's ICKY!"
I said calmly, but with a face as fierce as any battle bird, "Noah, this is the dinner that Mommy made for you. This is good food. And it's the ONLY food you may have until breakfast."
Noah decided, as always, to call me out. But seeing as this really IS perfectly logical and reasonable, I stuck to my guns and repeated, "You may have THIS food that Mommy made, Noah. If you don't eat it, you will have to wait until breakfast for something else."
We eat at 5:00. At 6:00, he snuggled against me in the family room and said, "I'll try the chicken now, Momma." And he really did eat it, along with a glass of milk.
HURRAY! VICTORY! I win! I win!
Which is the same thing I said when I completed all of Level 3 of Angry Birds, which, by the way, Noah calls, "Mad Birds." ;)
P.S.--If it wasn't clear (it might not have been; I suffer from being rather convoluted), the reason I sat around playing Angry Birds is that I was waiting for Joey to throw up. I never like being alone when it happens to me, you know?
P.P.S.--When I told Noah he was hurting my feelings when he called my cooking icky, and asked how he would like it if I screamed that his artwork was icky, he said, "But you WOULDN'T. You love my artwork because it's so beautiful."
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