PC asked me tonight if I was going to write about today, and I told him I really didn’t have the energy. Today was one of those days where you see your child at their worst. You question every parenting decision you’ve ever made and it was the kind of day that if Nathan grows up to be some kind of deviant we can be all “oh yeah– remember that one day- we should have seen it coming.” You know, he’ll probably be caught stealing from Walgreen’s someday and I’ll say to PC- “its because we denied him ice cream that one day.”

Its funny because I was just thinking about how great 4 is. Its like all of a sudden, Nathan embraced his 4 year old self and he was this totally new kid. He listens. He follows directions. He is polite. The other night he asked me if I could get his bike out for him and I told him not at the moment- I was cooking something on the stove. He then tells me, sincerely, “Oh, Im so sorry mom- I didn’t realize you were doing something. I can do it myself.” Wh-huh? Yeah, I wasn’t sure it was my kid either. But- thats the kind of stuff thats been going on around here. But today. That One day.

It started off with being a toy hog when we had friends over for brunch. He spent much of the morning in his room. It sort of just went downhill from there. The neighbor kids came over tonight and as much as I like them (I genuinely do) when the two of them and Nathan get in here its like all hell breaks loose in the house. Toys start flying all over, the house is trashed in a matter of minutes, Nathan starts jumping off furniture. Even though PC was supervising I could hear it….feel it happening from the kitchen and I started to feel my blood pressure go up. Then ‘Mc-into-everything’ is chewing on shoes and going for the stairs and eating every piece of dirt and fuzz of our filthy floor (Kimmy….where are you Kimmy?) and I told PC “OUT- SEND HIM OUT.” And he didn’t like that idea. And then he didn’t come home for dinner. And then he hit PC. And then he screamed child obsenities that he didn’t want his daddy anymore and didn’t want to live in this house anymore. Funny thing is the other day when he tried something like that and told me he didn’t want his sister living here and didn’t want to share and didn’t want this family; I told him that I understood and I had a solution: I put him on the front step, told him he could go find a new family, and shut the door. Turns out he didn’t really want  a new family.

He came out from his room for dinner (“mommy- I HAVE to eat my dinner because if I don’t eat all of my dinner I dont get dessert.”  Yes, he was pulling out all the stops) was good for dinner but as I was trying to scoop his ice cream he started licking the scoop, I told him to get out of the kitchen, he protested, PC’s last fuse blew, he escorted Nathan upstairs where there was more screaming and more child-obscenities and PC getting hit with a hanger. I went up there, tried to smooth things over and make the screaming STOP. I got hit in the face with a Nana, and we promptly gated his room so he couldn’t get out and left. Clearly there was nothing that was going to salvage the day, starting over tomorrow is the best we can hope for. My mom always reminds me that kids have bad days too, and this was certainly one of them.

Filed under: Nate the Great, someday you'll look back at this and laugh...someday