Doing My Best & Worst

Well all family members expected for Christmas are here, and the summary phrase to describe the chaotic, energetic, irritating madness is, "Why did we agree to host again?"

Oh yes, that bad. Within the span of the past four hours, we've had the following joyous events:

• My father yelling at my DD, "Do what your mother tells you to do young lady!" Bearing in mind that a) she is only 2, and b) at that moment she was doing what I had told her to do. After an instantaneous expression of shock, DD promptly burst into tears and I had to repair the damage as best I could, given that she was 1.5 hours past her bedtime and still hadn't eaten her dinner. And, of course, my dad did not apologize to her when I told him that she had been doing what she was told to do.
• My brother (aka Dad Junior) throwing what can only be described as a hissy fit about the planned sleeping arrangements which included them sleeping on our sleeper sofa. Brother insisted that we find our other air mattress, disclaimed loudly to SIL that, "I'm not sleeping on some damn flea-ridden sofa bed!" and in short behaved like a completely boorish asshole. Er, first of all, our sofa bed is not flea-ridden, and second, if it was such a big deal, why did you not say anything weeks ago when this plan was suggested by phone, and before I hunted down the sheets for it, washed them, and put them all on the sofa bed? Thank you for wasting my time and insulting my housekeeping.
• A tiff with DH after I had to segregate myself with our DS (again) in our bedroom to try to get him to go to sleep. This particular tiff occurred after DD and Niece #2 were running back and forth down the hallway and even came into our bedroom, looking for DS in his crib. Needless to say, I was not best pleased by this turn of events, and called DH in to suggest that a) DD needed to sleep alone in her room, so the air mattress for the Nieces needed to be removed, b) DD needed to be put to bed, and c) I needed my laptop and to be left alone. DH was annoyed to be told that he wasn't supervising DD properly, and I was annoyed that all my hard work of putting DS to sleep was being destroyed every two minutes. It was quite frustrating for both of us.
• Overheard from Brother, "(Daughter), you need to go do this, okay? You don't want me to yell at you like Uncle (DH), do you?" Em, thanks a bunch for vilifying DH to your child.
• Our very tired DD being told she had to eat "five bites more" at the dinner table before she would be excused so she could go to bed. NO. We do NOT play that game in this house, TYVM. If she wants to eat, she'll eat; if not, that's fine too. We don't make a big deal out of trying to force an overtired child into eating a "proper" dinner. I (having just returned from finally getting DS down) said she was done, and it was time for bed.
• Me being the "bad guy" and insisting that the air mattress be removed from DD's room so that she would go to SLEEP, FINALLY, TWO HOURS past her bedtime. Gee, I wonder why she wasn't going to sleep--it's not like Nieces entering and leaving the bedroom every three minutes with endless and pointless requests had anything to do with it, you think?? And this after Niece #1 was oh-so-helpfully showing DD how to jump on the air mattress! Visions of broken limbs aside, it was quite clear early on that the proposed sleeping arrangements would not work, so I was a bit peeved to have to be the Enforcer What Lays Down the Law at 9:30 pm. I could not help but grouse to myself that if the Law had been Laid Down an hour earlier, DD would have been asleep and everyone (myself included) could have enjoyed a good dinner together, as DS would have woken up AFTER I had a chance to eat.
• Me skipping dinner, because frankly, by the time I was done soothing overstimulated and overtired children to sleep, all I wanted was to BE LEFT THE HELL ALONE for a bit so I could unwind. Which, of course, made the jibes and sarcastic remarks of my Family At Large oh-so-fun as I attempted to lower my blood pressure by doing the mundane and sanity-returning practice of reading the newspaper. Thank you for being understanding, Family! Oh wait.

I love family get togethers. I would love them even more if the families involved would a) stick to planned arrangements, b) be realistic about children's behaviors (and here I include myself), c) be a bit more open-minded to how other families operate, and d) refrain from commenting on or attempting to enforce behavior codes inappropriate to the situation. I don't care if my Nieces stay up late, but would it be a teeny bit much to ask that Brother refrains from castigating or criticizing my style of parenting to his kids or a general audience at large in my own home? Hrrrhhhm, I guess so.

I hope sometime over the next few days I get a chance to blog about the flip side, the good things to getting together as a family. At the moment, however, I have a newspaper calling my name. Good evening.