Mother of the Year

Malcolm in the Middle is now the boys new favorite show. I guess a show about a family full of boys torturing their mother in various and sundry ways really resonates with them. I must admit I like the show too. I liked it even before I had kids. I found it to be a funny and well written show. Now that I have two boys I have a much deeper appreciation for the trials and tribulations of poor poor Lois. Tonight, I had a very Lois moment.

Last weekend the boys went on their annual St. Patrick's Day outing with Supermarket. When the boys go anywhere with my mother, it is understood that I am to pack the very expensive electronic toys that she purchased for them for various gift giving holidays. Without these toys, what would be a relatively pleasant sit down dinner turns into a tedious whinefest of "How much longer before the foooood gets here", "I'm staaaaaarving" and finally "I'm full. Can we go now?" If, upon arrival, these video screen goodies are not in the suitcase, Cheri becomes very cross. Cross Cheri is quite unpleasant to deal with, so, you can see why I was in a state of near panic when I could find neither the Nintendo DS nor the iPod Touch. I turned the house upside down. Finally I had to give up and just hope that the boys knew the whereabouts of said expensive electronics. Jakob did. Max did not. In fact, Max admitted, after intense questioning, that he had not seen his iPod in about two weeks, in other words, since we had gotten home from Florida. This made me shudder, since the last time I remembered him having it was at the Ponderosa in not too close Ashland, VA. (Just as an aside, Cheri sure does love her some Ponderosa. She really does. No really, it's all she talked about the last two hours of the ride. Despite all her fancy and expensive trappings, there's something about a Ponderosa steak that she just can't resist.) All I could picture was some lucky Ponderosa busboy playing TapTap Revenge on Max's Touch. Of course, I yelled and hollered and said how "disappointed" I was about his inability to be "responsible" for his things. This is not the first time Max has heard this speech, as there is a long list of lost (and relatively expensive) items to his credit. On our first trip to Disney he lost his Leapster. On a flight down to St. Augustine he lost an entire case full of DS games. In our regular life he somehow managed to lose two, that's right, TWO scooters in the span of two months. Now, don't go thinking I stupidly bought him a replacement scooter. No, after he lost his, he went right round and lost his brother's scooter. Lesson learned for Jakob. I can't even begin to count the number of other toys, jackets, gloves, lunch boxes, balls, et cetera, that were lost forever on Max's watch. Max was subjected to the "disappointed""responsibility" speech more than a few times this past week. He got an especially guilt inducing rendition yesterday when he asked Andy if we could get a dog. I'm sure you can picture it, blah, blah, blah, "living thing" blah, blah, blah, "can't even take care of" blah, blah, blah.

The problem came to a head today when Jakob's DS went missing. I decreed that there would be no fun of any kind in our house ever again until the missing electronics were finally located. There were grunts and groans of disapproval which did not at all put me in a better mood. More speeches about disappointment, responsibility and general messiness flowed from me and Andy. The situation seemed so grave that there were even prayers to St. Anthony. And, then, lo and behold, the DS turned up under the couch that Andy insisted had already been searched thoroughly. This little fact convinced me that the rest of the places in the house that had been "searched thoroughly" needed further examination. We pressed on until dinner with no luck. Then it happened. Right after dinner. I suffered an epiphany while Andy was putting the kids to bed. What was this great moment of truth you ask? Well, it suddenly struck me that I had hidden the iPod under the plastic lining of the pencil drawer two days after we got back from vacation because I felt Max had had more than his fill of screen time while we were in Florida. I checked the pencil drawer and, sure enough, it was there. I ran to Andy, half excited, half in panic. I whispered "I found the Touch under the pencils where I hid it. What should I do?" He looked at me with a smirk and said "I don't know what to tell you. Other than you're a bad mother." I felt really really guilty. I wanted to confess to Max, apologize profusely and buy him off by, maybe, putting a pudding in his lunchbox. But there were a few things wrong with that strategy. First, whenever he looses anything in the future, which he surely will, the first thing I will hear is "Maybe you hid it, like the last time!" The second, and much bigger problem, is that, eventually, he will tell my mother. Keep in mind, this is the woman who, to this very day, reminds me every time I lose something, of the time I was nine and lost the money she gave me to buy her a Mother's Day present (I know) while making the 10 ft trip from the door of her Monte Carlo to the door of the Hallmark. Can you imagine what she could do with this new information? I can and it ain't pretty and I ain't having it. The two of them ganging up on me every time Max loses something in the next 20 years is a situation I find completely untenable. Therefore, I have decided to say that it was found underneath the seat of my car (which any mother with a junked up minivan will admit is a completely plausible explanation), live with the guilt and make a deathbed confession. The way I see it, Max get's his iPod, I get a life of doubt every time something goes missing. Win, win.