Sweet & Bitter

Jared has been trying so hard to take care of his sick mommy. Last night we got a movie (Marley & Me, which, by the way is NOT a kid's movie! It shouldn't even have been rated PG! Did anyone else think it was a kid's movie?) and Jared made up a bed for me with our fold-out camo chair, a little bedside table, and he even poured me a cup of juice to "make me feel better."

This morning, he said he was getting breakfast for me, and what kind of cereal did I want? I'd heard him getting a bowl and spoon, but when I went downstairs, he'd put a bowl on the table with a spoon, poured me a cup of juice, and had the milk out for me, too. What a sweetheart!

Maybe he's just trying to make up for yesterday's misdeeds. He got out every...single...plastic cup we own, filled them with water, and completely covered a little side table of mind with them. It wasn't big enough, so some of the cups were on a bar stool, which also wasn't big enough, so he'd stacked the cups on top of each other. Of course, he'd spilled some on the floor. And of course, the little side table isn't water-proof.

When I asked him to clean up the whole thing, he got a kitchen towel and sopped up the spillage, then hung the towel back on the oven door handle. That would usually be the responsible thing to do, but it was dripping wet, and made a huge puddle in front of the stove, which puddle I only discovered when I slipped in it.

He said he'd cleaned it up, and I was too exhausted to go check. Later I went down to the same setup, just with less water on the floor.

Minutes later, he started hauling every box of cereal we own (which is a lot, since I stocked up a few weeks ago!) upstairs. WHY-hy-hy???? (can you hear the whimpering in my voice?) He was building a "cereal machine." Mostly he was just using them as large building blocks. We have several plastic containers with flip-top lids for our bulk cereal purchase. He had those too. I told him to go put them away again, but my squeaky, sore-throat, stuffed-up voice seems to have lost all authority. While I was trying to convince him that he really did need to take them downstairs, he accidentally popped the lid on the Grape-Nuts container and sprinkled them liberally in the hallway.

That made him feel bad enough to obey me. He took them downstairs. I followed him minutes later to find that he was now building with the cereal boxes in the family room instead of putting them away. Ooh, I was mad by then. I told him to put every single box back in the pantry, because apparently I hadn't made that clear before. He was so hurt by this suggestion! His lower lip quivered and his little shoulders started going up and down as he struggled with his emotions.

"Mom, you are destroying my fun!"

Yes, I'm officially now a mean mommy.

~~~~~~~~~~
Post script: Jared did something else that threatened my sanity while I was finishing up this post. He started screaming and crying, so I sent him to his room to calm down. While he was in there, I heard him chanting, "Mean mommy, mean mommy, mean mommy!"