Arduousness

Four kids would be too many. I had 2 miscarriages and I think it was because God knew I'd be a terrible mother if I had more than 3 children. As it is, with 3 kids, I'm a marginal mother at best. You see, everyone has needs. And I am supposed to attend to these needs and I do. But then at 11:30 pm I start getting resentful of neediness and then I'm just plain angry and I honestly don't care how hungry or sad or confused or scared or constipated or febrile someone might be. I just want everyone to leave me the fuck alone. Truth.


Tonight I stayed up to watch a movie with my surrogate young adult child. Side Effects. I wouldn't really recommend that you watch it with your 9 yo daughter and maybe not your 12 yo son. Aside from the lesbian love scenes and graphic heterosexual sex, the movie was a bit creepy and kinda wigged me out, so now my daughter wants me to sleep in her room and my son is asleep in my room. The 20 yo is just fine though it has made her reconsider a career in psychiatry (it might help out her cousins who will need therapy bc their mother/her aunt let them watch developmentally inappropriate movies).


Summer has been incredibly busy for us. My solution to long, hot days is to be inside an air conditioned car as much as possible and this can only be accomplished by scheduling an exponential number of activities. I don't know if this is the solution to slothfulness but it sure as hell has the potential to cause exhaustion in the driver and irritability in the participants. So far kid 1 has 2 water polo teams, swim team, chess club, youth group and Boy Scouts. Kid 2 has lacrosse team, water polo team, swim team, chess club and Boy Scouts. Kid 3 has swim team and water polo and she did a week of basketball camp and she has a weekly reading class because I thought she might be a bit slow in the reading comprehension department (then I got her standardized test scores and I realized she's been fooling me). We still have another 3 weeks of water polo, Junior Olympic water polo, youth group trip, volleyball camp and sleep away camp for all 3. And I work, part time, but it's still work. WTF am I thinking? I hate TV and video games so much that I'm chasing my tale and spending close to $10,000 to torture my kids just to avoid it? Why didn't I just pull the plug?


Honestly, I don't think it was this hard for our parents. All they had to do was yell at us for talking on the phone for too long. They didn't have to contend with social media, assassinating video games, online Minecraft weirdos, electronic envy (my 9 yo has 2 friends with an iPhone 5 and she's outraged that she can't have one). Do I lock them in a closet? Give in? Or keep hemorrhaging cash and keep them so busy that they collapse in bed every night? Do they resent me? And, if it keeps them out of rehab or jail, do I care?


I realize that none of this is funny and I'm only bitching, but tough shit. And these are all rich, white girl problems. Yesterday at the dry cleaner, the kid who took my clothes was 14 yo and he and his 2 younger sisters are spending their summer in the dry cleaner's shop because their mother works there and she has no where else for them to go. Maybe that's the kind of camp in which I need to sign up my kids?


Alright, I'm exhausted now and I've been typing when I should have been cleaning the kitchen or sleeping. My poor husband is still working and he's so tired he could use tooth picks to keep his eyes open. I guess this is how it's gonna be unless we go to year round school...Australia anyone?



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Location:My messy home

Summer

It's 90 degrees at 10:30 in the morning, but with the humidity it feels like 98 degrees (according to The Weather Channel app). We are barely into the third week of summer and already I sense mutiny is on the horizon. I don't think there are any correct answers on how best to occupy your kids throughout the months of June - August. If you ask my kids, who are in the throes of/approaching adolescence, they'd tell you this is their ideal schedule:
A) stay up till 12-1 am every night
B) wake up at noon everyday
C) spend the 12 hours in between either playing Black Ops, Minecraft or watching movies on Amazon. (9 yo sister would request play dates with a different friend everyday and want you to do things like, take her ice skating)


I have a problem with their schedule. Maybe it's my mom's fault because she didn't tolerate slothfulness and now I'm conditioned to be the same or more likely, I'm just mean.
I don't mind being mean, because I figure that my popularity as a parent is inversely proportional to my effectiveness. But it can be exhausting, especially since everyone has an opinion now. I had no idea how easy I had it 5 years ago when they did what they were told, more or less.


I see myself as drill sergeant and they are in my boot camp. The really terrifying thing is I have morphed into my parents: "as long as you live under my roof...."
Yesterday as my almost 13 year old was complaining about some injustice, I told him not to worry because he only had to suffer through his father and my rules for 6 more years and then he could make up his own. He was surprised at the relatively little time he has left living with us and suddenly he was little again, "Mom, don't some kids still live with their parents after college?"


Speaking of which, we have the pleasure of my 20 yo niece living with us this summer. She's finished her first 2 years of college and a decade worth of teen years and she is not that much closer to maturity than my 12 year old. Don't get me wrong, she is absolutely lovely, and a joy to have in our home and I can only hope that my kids will be as successful, academically, but adolescence seems to extend into the mid 20s. The next 15 years look bleak for us.


I think I understand why parents want to live long enough to see their own kids struggle through parenthood. There is no price tag on vindication.
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