WORRY WART$

Being a step-mom to a growing 9 year-old girl has so far proven to be a joy as well as a challenge, and sometimes, just downright puzzling.  Thankfully, I was blessed with this particular 9 year-old who is a doll, and she took myself as well as my family into her life as easily and with much love as one could ever hope for.  Even though I'm lucky enough to get to have this little girl as my child, I still had to have a heavy-duty crash course into the world of parenting. 

I first approached parenting like one would a sleeping bear in a cage, a careful poke here and there with a long stick, and then a quick jump back if the bear happened to twitch.  I was terrified one wrong move or word from me would condemn her to a life of misery in her older years.  Sure she seems happy now, but 15 or 20 years down the road, while on the therapist's couch, will she be lamenting about how her evil step-mother picked up Lucky Charms when what she specifically asked for was Cap'n Crunch, which made her feel insecure and led her to a life of debauchery?  After much consulting and affirmations from both my and my husband's mom, and over the last couple of years as our girl started staying over more and more at our household, everyone seems to have found their place within it, and we all have found our family dynamic to be a happy one.

However, even though I've survived the parental boot camp basic training, I still am faced with the occasional situation that stops me in my tracks with a big WTF??? above my head. If asking myself WWMD (what would Mom do?) doesn't work, I consult her myself, simply because she seemed to have done a pretty darn good job of raising me if I do say so myself.  I also freely consult with my darling husband's mom, since I really admire the final product of her parenting skills as well.

One such WTF situation that came up recently was having the neighbor kids come over and play.  It was a new experience for me, because up until the last 3 weeks, we had been living in an apartment, and at that location we didn't have any kids close by that she could play with.  So, after moving into our house, being the social butterfly she is, she had quickly made friends with the young kids next door, and so the Mister made arrangements with the other parents to let the kids come play in our backyard for a couple of hours for an afternoon .  I came home from work to 3 happy kids and one happy dog running wild in the backyard.  I agreed to keep an eye on the backyard so the hubs could go get showered and ready for his upcoming work shift.  Getting into the "Life is Good" frame of mind, I stopped long enough to grab a slice of cheese from the fridge, then started to wander over to the couch fully prepared to relax in front of the TV with my snack listening to the sound of happy go-lucky kids playing in the yard behind me.

No sooner had the Mister disappeared, but in troops all three kids and dog.  I hadn't even made it to the couch, and my mouth was still wrapped around the cheese closing down on the first bite of it.  My mind started to frantically do its search through the WWMD files, trying to find the answer to the questions "is it ok  for the kids to come inside when that wasn't specified with the other parents?  Would it be rude for me to boot them back out? Will the other parents freak if they don't see/hear the kids playing in our yard anymore??"  And as I'm sorting through my own childhood memories on how this etiquette was handled when we had playmates over, the 3 year old peers up at me and says "That's my favorite kind of cheese.  I really like that cheese."  This distracted me from the first set of questions and moved me on to the next set of  "Do I feed the little one cheese? If she wants cheese, does that mean her 7 year old brother will want some too? What if he doesn't like cheese, do I offer them something else?" and a small yet persistent voice starts wailing in my brain "We're too broke to feed other people's kids, and quite frankly, I don't wanna share my cheese!" 

As Hospitality and Frugality start gearing up for an epic battle to end all battles, the little one pipes up again with an "I'm hungry!" and at those words, Frugality wins and I leapt on that like a drowning man on a lifesaver. I told her that if she is hungry maybe it's time for her and brother to go home and check with their mom and dad on dinner plans.  

Not taking the hint, it was about that point that the kids then spotted the cat and ran over to pet her and started talking about the various cats in their lives, so I hung back in the kitchen, trying to wolf down the rest of that cheese, contemplating the best way to get the kids out of the house and back into the yard, (and back into sight of their parents' house) while not coming across as being the Wicked Witch of the West. While I was chewing this over, literally and figuratively, I start to hear sobbing, from the 7 year-old boy.  Tuning back into the conversation, I heard him say something along the lines that his Mam had a cat that he loved, but then started hating because the cat scratched the Mam  in the eye and the Mam had to go to the hospital, and "What if the cat decides to scratch Mam so bad she DIES??"  As he starts working himself up into hysterics I told him "People don't die from cat scratches!" "But what if she does???"  "Just trust me, she won't."  (God help me if she actually did come to that fate) Then he started a new line of thinking, and came up with "Well, what if he scratches her again, and they  put him down?? I mean I hate that cat but I did love that cat once, but even though I hate him now I don't want him to DIE!!!"

So I sat back for a minute to try to think of the best way to calm this child down, while at the same time (because I like to multi-task) started to silently curse my husband for having this obscene sense of timing.  Here I was trying to diffuse this mini-meltdown with no luck whatsoever, when the whole of his babysitting experience was to simply enjoy the picturesque Norman Rockwall type scene of kids playing in the backyard. 

Before I could come up with a solution on how to convince the boy that neither his Mam nor the cat were in any grave danger,  my mother-in-law with her younger son arrived for a brief visit.  I pounced on them, and judging by the looks on their faces, I must have had a manic grin on my face (OMG GROWNUPS! YEESSS)  and I enthusiastically indulged in a few minutes of grown-up conversation in the kitchen, leaving the kids to ponder over life's misfortunes involving cats.

During that brief few minutes of adult respite, there was a knocking on the door.  I opened the front door, and saw no one.  I laughed and asked my brother-in-law if he was messing with me, and then the knocking comes again.  I finally figured out it was coming from the garage door. As if this afternoon hadn't been bizarre enough, but someone actually chose to knock on the GARAGE door as opposed to the front door, where one would normally think a visitor would knock when they came a'calling??  Upon opening this door, there stands my neighbor, with the 3 year-old.

  He took one look at the wailing boy, said "Oh you're over-dramatizing again?" and with a few words of thanks whisks both kids away back to their home, while I start looking for a rock to crawl under because it was then that I realized the 3 year old had waltzed out of my house with me none the wiser, to go get her dad to fix the boy's crying problem, which is probably what I should have done to begin with.  Leave it to a 3 year-old to find the obvious solution. I really started to berate myself for being such an awful caregiver, but when I started to bemoan the fact that he might never trust his kids over at my place again, it occurred to me that might not be such a bad thing. 

Of course, as soon as they were gone, when serenity settled into the living room once more, my husband makes his reappearance to finish off a fun visit with his family, totally oblivious of what had gone down during the 20 minutes he was in the shower.

A night or two later, the same neighbors invited my husband over for a couple of beers (I was at a friend's at the time) and he learned that the other set of parents were just as embarrassed as I was about the whole situation.  They felt badly that the little boy had fallen apart during the short time I was watching him. They explained that they were looking into getting therapy for him since his "over-dramatics" were getting a bit extreme.  Based off this information, I decided we were square in the questionable parenting department, and figured fresh slates all around for the next time, if there ends up being a next time, when the kids come over to visit.

I did find though that with all that happened that day, the little boy did teach me one thing.  I was driving down the highway, on my way home from work, worrying about our finances, when I noticed that gas had hiked up another 16 cents per gallon during the 9 hours I was at work. This of course escalated my worrying, and I started to wonder if we're approaching a day that I won't be able to afford the gas for the commute, and if I can't afford to get to work, then how can we afford rent, and if I'm not the only one that can't afford to commute to work anymore, will that cause the economy to totally derail, and what if we have to live like they did in the Great Depression.....and what if the cat scratches Mam so bad she DIES??  I realized, that like the boy, I had quickly started to over-dramatize, and while the future looks like it holds a lot of potential for scary stuff happening, there was no point in making myself sick over it.  I will remind myself of Mam and the cat when things get overwhelming, and try to stay focused on today's problems only, and let tomorrow work itself out.