Play Nice

We are in the phase of life with Mitch that defies positive outlooks.  He doesn't want to be positive and under no circumstances does he want you to be positive either.  He's currently working on making sure that anything good  that happens now or in the immediate future will be ruined or at the very least forever tainted in our memories.  I'm not sure what's going on in his little head and heart, it's gut wrenching to see him so miserable, but I'm going to hand him his butt soon and make his life even worse.  He's been driving me nuts this last week and other than killing him, I'm not sure what will help.  He's hitting anyone who gets close enough to reach, wether they are trying to hug him or hurt him doesn't seem to matter much.  No one is safe.  We've been working diligently trying to teach him how to be soft, so now he hits you and immediately strokes your face while whispering "soft", then hits you again and runs away.  Not what I was going for, but it's a step.  I'm not sure what direction, though.

Today he's a shrieker.  For the last 2 hours there is a cat being stepped on sound that happens with no warning over things that only he sees as transgressions.  Small things that I just don't see coming set him off and his little body goes rigid, his head snaps back and his face contorts while this ungodly high pitched noise comes out of his mouth.  I'm unable to circumvent problems, because even he doesn't know what the problem is.  An offer of an activity that is usually a favorite makes him run in place with tears streaming down his agonized face, and if I don't let him do something that is known for being forbidden he acts surprised and throws himself to the floor in despair.  I told him to stop hitting Jack and to play nice.  The level of anguish that my saying that caused was unbelievable, I just stood there with my mouth hanging open, watching him unravel.  He's an emotional wreck and it's hasn't let up.  He wanted to draw on my grocery list and I was still trying to write = he shrieks.  I finally give him his own pen and try to write around him = he shrieks and throws the pen because he wants it all to himself.  I give him his own notebook = he shrieks and rolls around on the floor because he wants my list.  When I told him not to draw on himself and only on the paper = wow.  I'm surprised I didn't spontaneously combust.  He looked at me like I was the most disgusting thing he's ever seen and ran away screaming.  That hurt coming from a kid who plays with dog poop at the park.
The boys are playing like boys, which means there are a lot of heavy thuds and random crashes coming from their room, and usually that's fine.  But today, every few minutes Mitch comes running out to throw himself on my lap and wail like nothing will ever be right again and Jack follows him as far as the doorway to watch with a look of scared confusion.  He looks at me like he's asking "What is WRONG with him?"  I don't know, honey.  I don't know.
I keep telling myself that if I can stay sane and keep him alive until nap time it will all be okay.  He can scream in his bed and I can lay on the couch and scream into a pillow and somehow everything will work out.  Maybe after he wakes up he will be back to being my sweet little boy that gives kisses and hugs, who laughs at everything and is kind to others.  That thought is the only thing keeping me together right now, so don't burst my bubble, okay?

Dinner and a Movie

Jordan came down from the mountain on Friday to surprise me with a family date night.  I was so touched that he made the effort to come spend time with us, that I forgave him the fact that his goal this week is to kill one of my favorite animals.  When he first turned the knob on the front door however, I kind of freaked out because I wasn't expecting anyone.  He had left me alone and unarmed (he had taken my hammer that I sleep with up to the campsite with him for the week) which caused my heart to race when I thought someone was trying to get in.  I figured it was either a bad guy or the little 13 year old handicapped girl that hangs out on our porch and calls me "coach".  Both options were equally unappealing, but for entirely different reasons.  If it was a bad guy, all I had to defend my children was pure rage and a mother bear's ferocity.  If it was Esmerelda, it meant that she was to the point of just walking in without knocking and our relationship had progressed into the restraining order stages.

 I was thrilled to find out it was neither of the two.  My next thought was that he had come home only because he was hungry and he was going to leave again just as soon as he got the tinfoil dinners he had forgotten earlier out of the freezer.  When I had found them after he left on Wednesday I'd wondered what he was going to do for food for a week, miles away from anywhere.  Worry reared it's vicious head and I had started having images of my husband huddled next to a fire, emaciated and looking forlornly across the flames at his buddy Justin who was eating a half side of beef in ecstasy.  In all actuality it was nothing so dramatic, he had left the dinners on purpose because he knew he was coming back.  What he hadn't planned on was me eating them in his stead.  Hey, just because I had visions of my husband slowly starving to death doesn't mean I had to as well!  He told me that he had been worried about leaving the dinners behind, that it might tip me off that he was coming back.  I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't even consider his coming back, my initial response was to preheat the oven.

So after we made plans to go shopping for more food (I'm sorry!), he told me he was going to stay the night at home so he could watch Jack's last soccer game in the morning.  Did I tell you how much I adore this man???  I think I even started jumping up and down while squealing like a Justin Bieber fan.  I've spent the last day in a dreamy fog, sighing with contentment and happiness.  Not even the game cancelation (due to weather) this morning could dampen my spirits.  I love being in love with my husband, and I love that he loves loving me enough to do sweet things, just to make me smile.

THE HUNT

This year my husband decided to try his hand at deer hunting.  It started out as a lark- "Oh sure!  I think that would be fun!" and has steadily grown to encompass all of our daily lives.  There are piles of items stacked knee-high in our bedroom that are "for THE HUNT".  The kids are constantly getting in trouble for scaling those piles of gear as well as unloading backpacks full of Rambo knives and insect repellant.  I tripped over the 8 man tent last night on my way to the bathroom at midnight.  Just so you know, 8 men are not going hunting with my husband.  Only one guy is, but he's not sleeping in Jordan's tent, because "that would be gay".  No, Jord needs the extra room so he has somewhere to put all his hunting paraphernalia, that's how much stuff we are talking about.  We've gone shopping multiple times for said paraphernalia, and when I expressed concern about how much we were spending he assured me that this was a one-time start up cost and he won't have to buy anything else for next year.  I made him shake on that statement.   And sign a document.

He's actually really funny and endearing about the planning stages, (I mean, if you can overlook the end result of his killing an animal).  I've caught him holding up shirts against his front at the store with a thoughtful look on his face.  He didn't see me laughing at him because I ducked down the next aisle.  I had the hardest time not throwing comments at him like: "Oh honey, that's so last season.  THIS is what everyone is wearing now to stalk and kill.  Swamp camouflage would totally bring out your eyes but alas (sigh), we are in the desert."  There are quite a few purchases that I just don't understand however, and probably never will.  Camouflage house shoes is one of them.  I just can't wrap my mind around the meaning of them.   Are they really hunting gear?  Or is he disobeying fashion rule # 73: Do not wear the same pattern head to toe.  Actually, he is most definitely breaking that particular rule.  I walked into the bedroom to find him trying on his "outfits" (I don't know what else to call them).  He wouldn't let me take a picture of him though.  I tried reasoning with him that he probably wouldn't even show up in the photo since he was wearing so much camo, he'd just be a floating face.  He didn't take the bait.

The other day I found an excel spreadsheet that he made for organizing THE HUNT.  He blushed and reminded me that he is a nerd when I waved it at him with my eyebrows raised in question. He's right though.  He is a nerd.  It's one of the things I love most about him.  I'm kind of expecting a PowerPoint presentation later in the week on where he will be hunting and procedures for finding him in case of an emergency at home.
This has gotten so huge that whenever Jordan says something about THE HUNT, I see those words in my head in capitol letters, obscuring any other thoughts that might have happened.  Granted, there's not many thoughts in my head at any particular moment, or maybe there are too many for any one of them to be clear.  I'm not sure.  Either way, THE HUNT is very distracting for me.  I'm hoping that it's everything that he wants it to be, and that he comes back recharged and rejuvenated.  That would make all the rest of this completely worth the effort of dealing with a man possessed.

Double Trouble

The boys have figured out that if they work in a tag team fashion they can have twice the destruction with half the beatings.  For example: Jack dumped water on my night stand.  The night stand is full of books that are in queue for next week's reading, and the paperbacks took the worst of it.  After he got in trouble and helped clean the water up, I spread the books out on the floor on towels to air dry.  My mistake was in leaving the room, because Mitch moved in and immediately started making confetti out of them.  See?  Double whammy and only one spanking each.  The bad part is that I used what was left of one of the wet-torn books to smack Mitch's behind once.  I instantly felt guilty and had images of interrogators using phone books on prisoners, and wondered if he would have life long trauma going back the the wet book incident.  The guilt (and worry) didn't last long however, because five minutes later I found he had pushed the stool up to the counter to rub a stick of butter onto a pineapple.  Obviously I hadn't made as much of an impression on him as I had thought, so I tried again (not really, please don't call social services).

As I'm typing this, Mitch is standing next to me in his diaper with his baby laptop, frantically hitting the buttons with his little sticky fingers trying to be like mommy.  He is angelic and adorable and I wonder how he knows exactly how far to push me before I run away screaming.  The rolling around on the bathroom floor in Wal-Mart moment was a close one.  Also, stabbing his brother with a fork over a dinosaur (that we have 3 of), unrolling an entire roll of toilet paper into the toilet, and smearing ketchup on the tv screen are all prime examples of pushing to the limit situations.  Then he throws on the charm long enough for my blood pressure to return to normal, wraps skinny little arms around my neck for a kiss and runs off to start the process again.   He's got great survival instincts, and I count down every night until bedtime so I can breathe again.  I make sure to go in after he's asleep however, to gaze adoringly down on his cherubic form and take that image to bed with me so that I don't wake the next morning still thinking of how much butter we go through at our house.

It's curtains for me

I have a friend who told me I was awesome and something she aspired to, when in the course of texting I told her that I was ironing my curtains.  What she didn't realize was how traumatic the course of events leading up to my having to iron them were.   Here is what happened:  My little cherubs were jumping on the couch, and after I freaked out for the 100th time that week over them hanging onto the curtains for balance (thus bending the rod), they got a spanking each and sent to their room.  Thirty minutes after they were allowed to join life again, they found themselves drawn to the couch against their will.  I know that my angels wouldn't willingly go against my wishes, they were answering the siren like call of the pure bliss of curtain hanging joy.  Well, just when I was to the point of snapping completely, the curtain rod beat me to it.  Off to Wal-Mart we go, since I don't want the neighbors to see my bits parading in jammies after dark.  When we got home I tried to install the new rod, and while I was balanced between the handrail of the treadmill and the back of the couch I realized that the rod was exactly the length of the window, with none to spare.  If I twitched the curtains, the middle fell down and dropped to the floor.  The boys took this as their cue to start dragging the downed curtains all over the house while hitting each other with the jagged pieces of the broken rod (that survival of the fittest saying didn't factor in two and three year olds).  Naturally I needed to wash them before I hung them again, so I threw them in the laundry.  By this time it's dark and I'm in my jammies giving the neighbors a show, so a return trip to Wal-Mart will have to wait until the following day.  Now, I followed the care instructions on the labels to the letter and everything turned out fine, except the black thread.  The black thread in the fabric's design shrunk, so the curtains were puckered and misshapen, a bit like my sanity at this point.  I spent that night pulling them into rectangles again and making plans to spend an entire day starching and ironing to see if they'd be worth saving.  However, the next day was another setback when I found out that the store in town didn't carry a curtain rod that long, and I'd have to wait another day to drive the two and a half hours round trip to get a replacement.  So I ironed like crazy and displayed my wares another night with a headache and a sore jaw from teeth grinding.  Today, I am pleased to announce, we have curtains shaped like curtains and they are hanging on a rod at the window, I am comfortable in my nightwear, and the people that have been camped in our front yard have moved elsewhere.  One more night and I was going to start charging.  So you see, I am not an overachiever or a super organized June Cleaver.   I am just struggling to stay even.  As I typed the last sentence, both boys ran and jumped on the couch and my blood pressure spiked into the danger zone.  When people start wondering why I talk with my teeth clenched and nostrils flared- this is a contributing factor.

To help or not to help

Help/ v. 1. provide (a person, etc.) with the means toward what is needed or sought.  This is the word that Jack keeps using when he's following me around the house while I'm trying to clean.  I don't think he's familiar with this definition however.   What he is doing is closer to the definition of hinderance and Mitch is just plain endangerment.  There I was, balanced on the top rung of the ladder, trying to clean the fans on our 12 foot ceilings.  There Mitch was, lurking just out of sight, waiting until I was cleaning the bulbs to turn on the light.  When I was blinded, he turned on the fan and ran away giggling when I screamed.  Meanwhile, Jack was jumping on the bed and said "careful" in a bored, told-you-so tone of voice.  So I went down the ladder with stars in my eyes to turn everything off and when I turned around Mitch was all the way up the ladder and getting ready to jump onto the bed 3 feet away.  I guess I should be relieved that he's just an opportunist, and it's nothing personal.  He's the guy that completely takes advantage of "wrong place, wrong time", and makes it work for him.  Whenever I try to imagine his future I break out in a cold sweat and get shaky hands.  If he doesn't end up in prison we'll be grateful.

Jack's First Love

Tonight we went to a new restaurant here in town that is run by our old librarian Curtis and his son.  Let me just do a little advertising here first.  Amigos was really a great experience; to have that excellent of service, great food and a CLEAN building is almost unheard of in our neck of the woods.  The bathroom was sparkling, which is a selling point in and of itself.  And just as you may have guessed, the evening's entertainment was provided by our children as usual.  Mitch immediately pushed his hand through the curly cues of metal on the back of his chair, getting stuck like a baby raccoon.  I was thinking of flagging down someone to ask for butter when he finally came free.  Jack had chosen the table that was in direct line of sight to the TV which put us in the bar section of the restaurant, but as soon as he saw our server the TV was entirely forgotten.  He never had a chance once she smiled at him with her braces reflecting the neon glow from the BudLight sign in the window.  Her name was Jennifer and she had a certain flair that was unique, cheerful and incredibly endearing.  Jack started chatting her up almost immediately, laying on the charm just as thick as he could.  I think he even batted his eyelashes at her, giving me gray hair at the same time.  Even after we had ordered and she left to serve other customers, he couldn't take his eyes off her, she was like a siren .  Just as I took a bite of my appetizer, she walked past and he sighed saying in an awed-hushed voice "Wow. You're beautiful."  I did the only rational thing you can do when your four year old son hits on a woman in a bar, I choked on my deep fried dill pickle.  Jordan was so floored by the moment that he just watched me struggle for breath with big round eyes.  When he could speak again he asked Jack to repeat what he had just said, which Jack did- saying "she's beautiful" in a tone that also asked "She's an angel with a platter of hot wings, how do you not see it?".  So Jordan asked him if he wanted to tell her and Jack nodded solemnly while still murmuring "beautiful".  Right then she came to our table, almost as if this moment was meant to be for our blossoming young son, and with his heart on his sleeve and love in his eyes he opened his mouth and stuttered out the first thing that came to him- "Thank you very much. I eat chicken...."  Whew!  That was close.  I almost freaked out for a minute there, but since he has no game what-so-ever I felt like I could possibly relax and enjoy the rest of my meal without having to restrain Casanova.  But then it hit me.  My little boy had just had his first love.  HE'S GROWING UP!  That's when I lost it and started to bawl.  I mean sobbing into my pickle, bawling.  It came out of nowhere with no way to control it, I just had to ride out the storm of emotions in the middle of the dinner rush.  Jordan asked me how I think I'm going to handle it the first time Jack brings a girl home for us to meet.  I told him I had planned on hiding in the bathroom that day, or going to the dentist.  He can tell me all about it afterwards when there are no witnesses to my mini-breakdown.  But just thinking about  it makes my throat close up and my bottom lip quiver.  I'm years away from that particularly brutal experience, but I'm sitting here at my computer wiping my eyes and sniffling into a tissue while I think about my sweet boy being old enough to hold a girl's hand.  I'm not going any farther than that, even in my head, because if I imagine him kissing a girl I'll wind up going to bed early to weep into my pillow.