Mommmmmmmeeeeeeeeeee!

Some days, for whatever reason, my children are just High Maintenance.

Most days, they’re on the moderate side, attention-demands-wise. They want cuddles, they want to tell me lengthy stories, that kind of thing. No big. And of course, around meal and snack times, they tend to hit me with about six hundred action-related questions per second: can I have juice? Cookies? Candy? A pretzel? Oranges? Bananas? What about my juice?

And some days, I almost wouldn’t even know they were here. Those days are rare. But they do happen. They go up into their rooms and play, all day, and I hear next to nothing from them.

That, however, was not today.

Today was a High Maintenance kind of day. I suspect it is because I am actually trying to do things today. I have a lot of ducks to get in a row today. I have a lot of paperwork I’m trying to do today. I’ve got a task list, and none of it is time-insensitive.

So naturally, every eight seconds: “MOMMMMMEEEEEEEE!!!!!!”

She took my toy.
She hit me.
She’s in front of the TV.
She’s sitting on the table.
She’s got my paper.
Captain Adventure got out of the playroom!
Captain Adventure is on the stairs!
Oops – Captain Adventure just fell over backwards and hit his head and there’s BLOOD coming out!!!!
Can I have some juice?
Can I have cookies?
Can I have pizza?
Mommy – mommy – mommy – mommy – mommy – mommy – mommy - !

“Look,” I say, in my best Reasonable Adult voice. “I’m kind of busy right now. I need to finish what I’m doing. Can you guys go into the playroom and play until lunchtime?”

“OK,” they reply, in their best Reasonable Kid voice.

Five seconds later, someone has hit someone else over the head with the Ming vase, and all hell has broken loose. And I have so far filled in three (3) of the approximately seventeen thousand (17,000) boxes on each of the fourteen (14) forms I’m trying to get filled out today.

**sigh**

On the bright side – the Snooty Center has welcomed both of my youngest children with open arms. Sure, maybe it’s just all good PR, but they seemed very happy to see all of us again. Captain Adventure was delighted with the toddler room (which will last until he realizes that it means Mommy is {gasp} going away, which will end his love affair with it immediately) and Boo Bug had to be physically torn away from her new classroom and cried all the way home because it was “cooler” than her current preschool.

Hmm. I wonder if they could start, you know, like, um, how about tomorrow? Does tomorrow work for you guys…?

(Anyone wishing to take bets as to whether I will spend the entire first day of so-called freedom sniffing into a Kleenex may do so, just don’t do it in front of me. I like to pretend I’m a big tough old ‘suck it up and walk it off’ kind of mommy.)