We Broke Our Mom

Hi Everybody! This is Cesar, my mom’s almost 3 year old son. She normally writes here at Motherhood Is An Art but for the last few weeks my mom has been broken.

My name is Cesar!

Last year I also wrote a piece on my 2nd birthday. It was one of my mom’s most read posts. Seeing as I have quite a way with words I thought I would fill in here for my mom and give you some insight as to what is going on at our house.

As I mentioned, I am going to be 3 years old in a few weeks. I also have an 8 year old sister and a 6 year old brother.

My brother Bency and sister Iris

Together, we broke my mom.

It was a slow and gradual process but we put up an united front. By the last few weeks of summer we had officially “driven her up a wall”. There was a lot of walking out of the room to take deep breaths or her just standing and staring at us while her face twitched and turned beet red. There were also the sudden outbursts of long tangents with incoherent sentences about, “No one listens to me. No one appreciates anything.”

You could see my mom slowing cracking as she heard my older siblings fight for the 50th time over who got to be the dog in the Monopoly game.

You could see her mood change drastically when she made a big batch of refrigerator pickles with my sister while my brother was upstairs watching Phineas and Ferb. When my brother came down and discovered his sister got to make pickles he whined, “It’s not fair that I didn’t get to make pickles. You just love Iris more.”

My mom relented and let Bency make pickles too even though we already had more than enough. That batch managed to leak all over the inside of the refrigerator and my mom had to spend hours cleaning up the sticky vinegar and sugar brine. Plus, no one even likes the pickles.

She began teetering on the tipping point when all of us kids wouldn’t eat the big watermelon she purchased. Even though it was a seedless variety, my sister said the little white seeds were making her gag. My brother and I followed suit and pretended to gag too and refused to eat the red, sweet flesh.

Because my mom didn’t want to see it go to waste she pureed up the rest of the watermelon and made popsicles with it. We all took two licks of those frozen pops and deemed those gross too. Mom huffed and puffed and told us to go put them in the kitchen sink to melt. We all fought to get to the sink first and our popsicles fell to the floor and drips of the sticky substance splattered all over.

Someone made the mistake of asking for a different and better snack.

The day before school started my parents took us all out for miniature golf. On the 2nd hole I managed to fall into the water trap. I began screaming… not so much because I was hurt but because I was certain this was the straw that would break the camel’s back. I was sure this would put my mom over the edge. But as my mom pulled me off the concrete alligator as the water rushed over me I heard a sound I had not heard in a long time. It was my mom laughing! Instead of going on a ramble about how there always has to be some glitch in everything we do…she laughed as she pulled algae out of my hair. I thought it was a bit inappropriate seeing as her 2 year old had just experienced a harrowing ordeal but it was nice to see the sparkle in her eye and I began to laugh with her too. I didn’t even complain when I had to golf the next 16 holes sopping wet.

My mom laughing at me after I fell in the water

My mom is coming around and getting back to her old self. Although I noticed last night when I sneaked in the kitchen and stole a cookie without finishing my supper she started to say, “What do you think you’re doing?” and instead just finished with a “Whatever” as she shook her head in a tired, defeated way as her eye twitched a few times.

Maybe I’ll wait until later to tell her I pooped my pants and hid the underwear in the toy box.

Take care folks and I promise to start being really good so my mom can get back here real soon!

Cesar