And the Award Goes to…

This morning, I made plans for the day. Simple plans, really.

1. Get a shower.
2. Go to the library.
3. Get groceries.

I was ready to go before 9:30 (in the morning, even) – not bad considering that I hadn’t done my grocery list until after breakfast. The kids were ready by then, too. “Get the books,” I said to the kids while I gathered the CDs we’d borrowed. I’m sure you can predict what happened. One of the books was missing. This was especially amazing because there were only two kids’ books checked out; essentially, half the books were missing.

No problem – kids are mostly blind and I hadn’t looked for myself yet.

I started in the basement. Had it not been for the fact that I’ve politely asked fifteen million times, then commanded another twelve million times, then finally begging and pleading on my hands and knees for them to please please please put their toys away when they finished playing with them – had it not been for that, I might not have exploded.

The carpet was barely visible under their mess of toys and scraps of paper they’d used for “crafts” and “origami.”

Sadly, (pathetically?) I began screaming like a toddler. Some nonsense about how I was going to just throw all their toys away forever and ever because, really, is it so flipping hard to play with something, decide you’re done, and then put it back where you got it? If they would put away things when they’ve finished playing with them, there wouldn’t be a million toys to pick up.

In fact, I’ve already put most of their toys in the office – off limits – so that they have fewer things to put away. I very loudly pointed that out to my children who promptly began crying. If only that had been the worst of my tantrum. (As I sit here, Sienna is next to me, pretending to read out loud and in her story, the boy loves his mommy. That mommy mustn’t be much like me.)

No, I didn’t stop there. I ran upstairs, my children following, and got the trash can and threw away all the toys they constantly never put away – toy rings, plastic doll bottles, “origami” they’d done. Now, I don’t feel guilty for throwing that stuff away. It was all junk – not worth giving away and certainly not valued by my kids. In fact, our cat, Tuco, plays with those things more than my kids. And my kids took all that in stride – no one wailed as I tramped about looking for the next thing I could logically throw in the trash.

I might have settled down, actually, had it not been for Sienna whispering to Kaylee and Ethan, “Why does she always expect us to pick up everything?”

Have you ever seen a mushroom cloud that forms over the site of an explosion? Had you looked at me after she said that, you’d have seen one. It was all I could do not to throw her Cabbage Patch doll through a window. Suffice it to say, more tears were shed after that.

We all returned to the basement where I continued putting things away. While they stood there watching me.

If, indeed, I have buttons (once, when he was two, I told Ethan he was pushing my buttons and he lifted my shirt to see where the buttons were) to push, that is one of them. Wasn’t it quite obvious to these creatures with opposable thumbs that I wanted them to pick up the other stuff? I took their tool bench, their Leap-pads, and their Potato Head and stuffed them in the office.

I hadn’t forgotten about the missing library book – they had even been told that the money to replace it would come out of their own piggie banks. But now, in my mind, a cauldron of thoughts was brewing. Was I making this into too big of an issue? Was I being too harsh on them? Do kids who put things away without being told actually exist? I had started down the path of severe anger, was it too late to back up? I remember feeling at times that my parents had treated me unjustly – specific events where I had done something wrong (on purpose and on accident) and was reamed out by my mom or dad. Heck, I remember that I even lost a Charlie Brown book from the library in my room once. The day we got the bill for the fine was an awful, awful day. Would today be forever branded in their memories? Ethan even told me it was the worst day ever.

Attempting to act more like a 31 year old, I told my kids I was wrong for screaming. I explained that it was fine for me to be angry – after all, they had not obeyed me when I asked them to please put things away when they were finished with them. I said I was sorry for yelling and then we searched for the book in every room of the house, in the van, and then in every room again. I didn’t find it and neither did they. It was after 1:00 by the time we left to do our errands and almost 4:00 by the time we got home and had the groceries put away.

What about now, you ask? My throat hurts from yelling. My heart hurts from knowing I damaged my kids. My back, head, and neck hurt from all the cleaning.

And it occurs to me: I’d rather tear apart my house… and my kids, I guess… than to accept a “black” mark on my record. I’d rather destroy my children than to pay a few dollars to replace a book. It’s come down to the fact that I’m such a perfectionist, I’d put my “reputation” above my own kids’ feelings. Now that’s a crappy feeling.

I have plans for the rest of the day. Simple plans, really.

1. Hug my kids and apologize again.
2. Tell them “Thanks” for helping me look.
3. Read the new books we checked out from the library.