I was totally going to blog about Petrarch, Ovid, and Spenser, and yes there is a connection. I just read an amazing article that a friend sent me, and I have all sorts of things to say about it. But I will reserve that for another day. I am exhausted. Instead, I will tell you about my children which are equally as fascinating as Ovid I am sure.
Children like stability. When they begin getting shuffled around, especially when they are little, it is hard on them. My children are still too little to understand the days of the week, and every morning they must ask where they are going, who is picking them up, and at which home they will be staying. This is very stressful for them, and since, as I said, they don’t understand how the days work, they also don’t understand that certain things happen *every* Monday, and *every* Tuesday, etc., nor do they know when Monday is.
To aggravate matters, my crazy schedule demands even more shuffling around. On the days I work until ten at night my mother picks them up from school, and they spend the night at her house. You don’t have to be a parent to realize that picking them up after work at close to eleven at night, pulling them out of bed to drive them across town, only to get them back into bed close to midnight, and then yank them out just a few hours later is a bad idea. Not only does my mother spoil them rotten in the evenings, when morning comes, since she has nowhere she needs to be, the children get to sleep in until they naturally wake up to the smell of fresh eggs and honeyed toast (where were my fresh eggs and honeyed toast growing up?).
Needless to say, the next morning when they must return to being brutally awakened before dawn, they are less than pleased. Not to say I am brutal about it, but I think any time someone must wake that early the process is rather brutal.
Poor little things get schlepped back and forth between three different houses, sometimes two in the same day, and it is not difficult to see that they have begun acting up. They are exposed to different rules, expectations, bed times, routines, and even clothes. They are confused, perhaps even angry about it, but as I explain to them, this is just the way things are. Because I don’t know what else to say.
And how can I expect two small children to adopt my “it is what it is” mentality that took me decades to hone? Because for me it wasn’t so simple. It is what it is? Oh no! I willed, and forced, and contrived, unaccepting of circumstances, no matter how much out of my control. And I was a grown woman!
Yet while I make leeway for dissension, I can’t help but explain that temper tantrums and tears will not solve problems, make the week move forward any faster, change the course of where they will end up that evening, or help them spend any more time with whichever parent they happen to prefer at the moment (after force bathing Ally and threatening Ducky with a sponge, I don’t think I am going to make Favorite this week).
Also, after having been made to walk about six blocks to Starbucks, they are, to say the least, disgruntled. Tonight they were supposed to see their Nana… but instead, because I have the day off from work, they got taken around town. To show their appreciation Ducky threw himself on the ground as we were crossing Wilshire Blvd (huge intersection), and instead of trying to help me pick him up Ally decided she would throw down her juice cup and stand there as I wrestled with them across the street, essentially stopping traffic for about five minutes at what would normally be rush hour in the middle of Los Angeles.
I think they have had enough of their mommy right now.
