Painful embarassment
The Munchkin was quite a spitfire yesterday.
Our day started off rocky. Friend and I had made plans to go buy Mariners tickets for the rest of the games that we’d picked out at the mall, and arranged to meet at the team store – which is right next to the play area. So we figured we’d let the kids play for a while, and then make our rounds with the kids to some stores – Gymboree, Janie and Jack, Janeville, to name a few – and then head back to our house for lunch.
The Munchkin dragged her feet in the morning, making getting out of the house nearly impossible. To top it off, she’d hidden her hairbrush (and then tried to blame Baby Boy for it), so I insisted that she find it before we left so I could do her hair. I don’t know if that was the right battle to pick, but there I was, in the middle of it, and I couldn’t back down. I was looking all around the living room for it (I had seen it there just an hour earlier), while the Munchkin followed me around, whining at the top of her lungs, “I go play slide, I go play slide!”
I finally found the stupid hairbrush, got her hair in a ponytail, and hustled us out the door. The whole incident had not put the Munchkin in a particularly compliant mood, so I gave her a stern warning that she needed to behave while playing.
I met up with Friend and the boys and we turned the kids loose in the play area. Head has gotten much more confident in his large motor skills, and was climbing and sliding by himself. The Brain got ambitious and tried to climb over the wall to escape, but we put a stop to that. The Munchkin was tearing around, using up some of her relentless energy. If I could harness the kinetic energy of a hundred toddlers, I could conquer the world, I swear.
I was telling Friend about the hairbrush incident when another mom came up to us. “Excuse me, but does the little girl in yellow belong to you?” she asked. When I said yes, she continued with, “I just thought that you should know that she just hit another boy across his face.”
Unfortunately for me, she hadn’t hit the Brain or Head. However, this wasn’t the mom of the kid who’d gotten hit. I’m torn between deciding that she was being helpful or just butting in. I’m sure that she thought that she was being informative and helpful, but I would have rather had the offended party’s mother talk to me than the third-party witness. Either way, it was a terribly embarassing moment, and because I hadn’t seen it, my power to punish the Munchkin was limited. I marched her over to the boy she had hit and made her apologize, but I felt that was all I could do. Fortunately for her, no other incidents where she was the aggressor occured (she got shoved over later, but it didn’t faze her at all).
Our shopping began after the kids had played for about an hour, but the kids were definitely antsy. One cute thing did happen, though – the Brain and the Munchkin, while we were at Janeville, ran into an empty dressing room together. When Friend and I pulled them out, the Brain said, “We just wanted to see ourselves in the mirror!” Another lady heard him say that and commented to Friend and me how cute she thought they were.
We managed to get back to our house in one piece, had lunch, and the kids got to watch Veggie Tales while Friend made a couple of cards and I ate Thin Mint cookies (I shared with Friend!) and picked out stamp sets for my demonstrator starter kit for Stampin’ Up. Yes, I have decided to become a demonstrator. More on that later this week.
When Friend took the boys home, the Munchkin went down for her nap. She woke up in a much more compliant mood, and behaved pretty well at church.
In the meantime, I am still just so painfully embarrassed by her behavior at the mall play area. When I was talking to Friend after the whole thing, I suggested that maybe she needs martial arts lessons for the discipline and to learn how to channel her aggression properly. “Just make sure she doesn’t learn to break things with her head,” Friend joked. She did agree with me that martial arts may not be a bad idea, though.
“Think of it this way,” Friend said. “Maybe she’ll use up all of her angst now and be a really compliant teenager.” Long pause. “Nah.”
Maybe I should build a bunker now and stock it with non-perishable food and bottled water so that I can hide when that day comes. Anyone else got any better ideas?
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