Tonight Spencer woke up at 10pm. I heard him thumping loudly down his bunk bed, so I jumped up and met him in the hallway. "What's wrong, Spence? Are you scared? Are you sick? Are you gonna throw up?" "No," he says. "Well what's wrong then?" I ask. There was a long pause and then Spencer says, "I'm worried that I haven't been good enough this year." Then he started crying.
Um, that kind of caught me off guard. I ask him why he thinks he hasn't been good enough this year. He reminds me about the tree incident earlier this evening.
Oh yeah. From the minute he got home from school, Spencer had been a ball of gloom. We were trying to make some Christmas treats for our neighbors and he was just so grumpy! When the treats were in the oven, the boys finally played peacefully in the other room so I could clean up and start something simple for dinner. They seemed to be having fun. I heard laughing. Phew! No fighting; some peace and quite for a minutes, right? Wrong. I heard the Christmas tree fall with a thud.
Boys are easily entertained. They were tying one end of the string to the file cabinet on one end of the room, and needed something on the other end of the room to tie it to. Ah yes! The Christmas tree! Perfect! It worked splendidly for awhile. The string was about a foot off the ground- perfect for jumping over or sliding under. But when Grant accidentally landed ON the string during their acrobatics, the tree came crashing down.
I wouldn't have been so mad if the tree hadn't already suffered a few blows this year! The day after we put it up, Grant decided suddenly that he didn't like the tree and started removing the branches. Since he had helped his dad put the tree up, he knew just how to remove the branches. When I caught him, a third of the bottom branches were off! Our poor tree is probably hoping we'll hive him to DI and get a real one next year. (me too, actually).
So while I was trying to tip the tree back upright and get it to stand straight again, I totally lost my temper. The tree is not a playground, people! No-more-touching-the-tree!!
Back to Spencer waking up in the night...
Poor guy felt bad about tipping the tree over and was worried he had not been 'good enough' this year, and while he didn't exactly say "is Santa going to give me coal this year," I knew that's what he was thinking. I felt horrible. He WAS particularly grumpy today, but I had been just as naughty in my reaction to the tree falling over, and I felt bad too. I think it is really important to admit I'm wrong (if I'm ever wrong, ha ha) as a parent, so I apologized for overreacting. He apologized for tipping the tree over and for being grumpy. Nothing like having a little midnight chat with your 7 year-old to keep you in check! Hopefully Santa heard our heartfelt apologies in time to take us off the naughty list this year. I guess it's all pretty funny a few hours later. Too bad I didn't think it was funny then and take a picture!
6 comments:
Aww...Spencer is such a sweet kid, and you are such a great mom.
Our tree has since fallen 2 more times! Must be off centered now or something. It falls if you breath too hard when you walk by. Calvin, hurry home and come fix our tree to save us from certain death(or just save us from the wrath of mama). :)
I've been having a similar problem with Sierra. Bless her heart, she just loves to jump over and slide under string.
Spencer is the sweetest! It's funny how such a little thing is so big in their minds--and I bet neither of you were ever on the naughty list!
What a sweet boy! Your boys are so creative!
my kids like to rearange all of the ornaments on the tree which makes me crazy but I have to think of it as them loving to decorate just as much as I do! I wouldn't love the holidays as much as I do without my kids no matter how crazy they make me!
I think you are an awesome mom and have amazing kids!
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