Make a wish

And many mooooore...

Nothing funny to write about today. Just an intense day of dropping off the creatures at my dad's as he's watching them while we are on vacation, and then having to come home to an empty home which freaks me out even though the cats usually annoy the shit out of me when they're here.

We also had a hard parenting day. Zoe's friend went along with us to drop off the animals, and on the way home she and Zoe began lobbying to go swimming this afternoon. We already had other plans, so we said no. They continued. Let me clarify that by "lobbying" I really mean "pestering the shit out of me incessantly and refusing to accept the answer of no to the point that I wanted to throw them both out of the car." (Further clarification: the car was not moving at that time, so it's not as bad as it sounds.) (I'm not THAT mother.) I even threatened Zoe with banning all play dates for the summer if they didn't stop. Zoe lightened up, the friend charged ahead. By the end of the ride home (which is not a short ride, just so you don't think I can't handle five minutes of peppering) my head was pounding and I was livid. Her friend collected her things and M drove her home. When he and Zo returned I was vacuuming with an intensity that would have scared the shit out of the cats had they been around. M, wise man that he is, knew that it would not be good for me to handle this particular situation with our daughter so he left me to my vacuum-rage and cornered her in her room to have a talk. She was then left to stew about it for ten minutes and then they talked some more. The end result was a tearful apology which I immediately accepted, a discussion about how it's not nice to drive Mommy to the brink of insanity, snuggles, and a grounding from desserts until we go on vacation and from American Girl catalogs for a week after we return. This was glumly accepted until we celebrated birthdays at dinner tonight and she was denied birthday cake (see candles in today's photo). More tears. I came close to caving but thankfully M held his ground (actually, he held OUR ground since I was obviously too weak to do it alone), and I'm glad he did because just recounting her behavior here gets me fired up all over again. He was right and I knew it and he knew it and I'm glad he was there to be the strong one for me. This is why it's good for children to have two parents, so when one goes all weak-ass sissy caver, the other can be the righteous badass who does the best thing for the development of the child. And saves the weak-ass sissy caver's future sanity as hopefully the child will have learned from this lesson and will not drive the caver into a straight jacket.

Next time I may resort to screaming, "BECAUSE I SAID NO, DAMMIT! DON'T MAKE ME COME BACK THERE." Which is what I felt like doing but didn't because I don't want to be THAT mother, either.

This parenting stuff is fucking HARD.