Mother of the Year Material. Alternate Title: This Week Sucks

I've had one heck of a parenting week.

Benjamin has never been agreeable or interested in following the rules. Claire is now turning terrible two and is therefore also uninterested in following the rules. It's not like she has a good example. The only difference is, when I scold her, she actually shows remorse. Benjamin ignores me entirely.

Monday was a rough day. Everything went wrong. I didn't have the week planned (my mistake), so we woke up sort of in a fog of boredom. I couldn't get my creativity flowing. I packed up the kids and some PBJ sandwiches and hit the road. We were having a park picnic. Except the first park had zero shade trees and Benjamin was protesting "skunscreen." The second park had an enormous lawnmower blowing bits of grass everywhere with no sign of ending soon. The third park was having their driveway re-paved (I'm serious). The fourth park was the ticket. Only a wee bit of shade at the elementary school playground and swarming bees around our lunches we gave up on eating halfway due to fear of stinging, but we played.

In the afternoon, we packed up to head to the pool. We arrived and applied sunscreen. Before our feet touched the water, the inclement weather alarm sounded. That means at least 30 minutes of pool closure. We had to exit immediately. I'm scrambling to get my kids out before the downpour, but so are the 150 other people. We make it in front of the pool area and it hadn't sprinkled yet, so the kids were playing at the park directly in front of the pool. It begins to downpour. I grab our things and Claire...

...but where's Benjamin? No where to be found. Have I mentioned he's a perpetual runner (away-er)?

Usually he heads back up the grass hill to the pool locker room because he's obsessed with urinals and those disgusting pink urinal cakes (thanks, husband for the terminology I went 32 years without knowing-- gross me out). He is gratified by pissing on pink, flushing, and then washing his hands in the BOYS LOCKER ROOM BECAUSE I HAS A PENIS. I want to encourage him using the potty and standing to pee because it's socially acceptable and easier on me, too. So I let him go in alone. There is a door near the entrance and a door near the pool. I never know which he will exit because no matter what I say, he does what he wants.

I digress. We were in a downpour with imminent lightning approaching and I can't find my 3-year-old. I put Claire in the car and a stranger comes over to watch her while I run up to the pool to hopefully catch him there. At this point, multiple moms are helping me look. I run in hysterics and as soon as I arrive at the pool entrance, a lifeguard says, "I have your son and I was just about to come looking for you." I start bawling. He had apparently wandered into the guard office (which is never open except this day, so his curiosity got the best of him). I explain to him how dangerous it was and give the whole child abduction speech. And then he looks at me, laughs in my face, and having apparently heard nothing I was saying, says, "It's raining outside." 

And now the lifeguards look at me like I'm a negligent mom.

Yesterday at the pool, Benjamin pulled his whole, jump in the deep end while making eye contact with Mom super far away because he knows he's being a punk routine, but luckily he can swim to the edge and does with great success. Still scares the daylights out of me though. As we were leaving, he faceplants and scratches his entire right side of his face.

Two days later (today), we're at the pool again. Benjamin has to use the urinal (he's making it his goal to eventually use all of them--also applies to water fountains. ICK). I stand in front of the locker room facing the pool. Wait 5 minutes. I decided to head to the other locker room entrance (WHY ARE THERE TWO???) and a lifeguard once again walks out as I'm about 15 feet from him to tell me she was just about to come looking for me because she, once again, had my son. Because he cannot, for the life of him, listen to me about returning exactly to where Mommy is standing in front of the door you entered. It sucked even more when she said, "I recognized him from the other day." He's lost all privileges of peeing in urinals at the pool. He's stuck peeing on wet toilet seats in the girls locker room like the rest of us (with vaginas or kids who don't listen to their mommies).

Ugh. I might buy a leash. Just call me #supermom. I'm feeling every bit of it this week.