Those Pesky Elephants

It appears I am in the middle of one of those weeks. You know what it’s like, don’t you? When you have an absolute stinkin’ elephant of a day? When you feel like you’re wearing one flip-flop and one stiletto but you can’t quite figure out why you’re walking funny? And then Thursday’s smelly trunk grabs Friday’s hairy tail, and then and so on, and so on, until you’re hobbly-limping amongst a parade of pachyderms getting the occasional tusk in the arse but you can’t work out how to work it out?

Yeah. That’s me.

I’m in a bit of a funk at the moment, to be sure.

It’s a combination of a number of things: the rubbishey weather settling in for the long haul; the nights closing in (on this side of the Pond it’s dark at 3:30pm in the depths of winter); and my almost-5-year-old being an almost-5-year-old. Let me tell you: he’s good at it.

EVERYTHING* is an argument at the moment. It doesn’t matter if it’s:

“Brush you teeth, Ben, “ or...

“Eat your tea, Ben,” or...

“Pull up your underpants, Ben,” or...

“Bedtime, Ben, “ or...

“Time to go to school, Ben,” or...

“The-house-is-on-fire-we-need-to-flee-by-the-nearest-safe-exit-or-we’ll-burn-to-a-crisp, Ben,”...

...they’re all met with the same resounding, “NO!” closely followed by a million BUT’s to explain the reasons why THE WORLD WILL END if he doesn’t FINISH the UNDERGROUND WORLD in Super Mario3 RIGHT NOW and he can’t stop to go to the toilet because eventhoughhe’sdancingonthespothereallydoesn’tneedtogo...

That kid is unbendable! He is so determined, his resolve is made of STEEL. Or something stronger than steel! Kryptonite, even. His father and I are a bit frazzled with trying to keep up the old ‘Supernanny-positive-reinforcement’ stuff. BECAUSE OF ALL THE YELLING.

It’s my own fault – he’s EXACTLY like me.

I know it’s just a phase and I’m absolutely certain that there are other mothers who have had a professional almost-5-year-old in their households at some point in time (my own mother included), but I had been getting a little scritchy with it all. We all make connections between the behaviour of our children and our parenting abilities, don’t we? So needless to say there has been a lot of nostrilley-flarey breathing and counting to ten going on in the past week. Like a lot of my fellow Mammies/Mummies/Mommies out there, it is vitally important for me to ensure that there is no prolonged inequities in the delicate balance of all my ‘selfs’... Girl and Mother and Wife and Friend. Needless to say, those scales were a little wonky.

Then the other morning? I had one of those ‘Life’s Little Moments’ and I knew that everything was aaaaaaaaaaaall good, really. I dropped Ben off at school after a pretty trying morning (toothpaste and Weetabix everywhere; it wasn’t pretty...) and Jude and I went for a long walk to the shops to pick up a few bits and bobs.

When we were walking home, we were just passing the schoolyard as Ben’s class was coming out for their morning break. He came flying out of the classroom doors, all Tazmanian-devilish and giggly. He didn’t see me at first, standing at the fence. I watched him for a couple of minutes and then he saw me and zoomed, blurry-footed across the yard. “MAMMY!” he squealed, delighted in having a sneaky, unexpected visit from me in the middle of the school day.

I bent down to talk to him and he kissed me. Through the fence! And then ran off.

Balance restored.

Ben & Me - Bolam Lakes, 26 September 2009

*sorry about all the CAPS, they are making me bong-eyed, too.  Honestly.  Sorry. Rrrrrrrrreally, really mean it.