I got home from the grocery store the other day and had both arms full of groceries. I was struggling like I normally do to make it into the kitchen with grocery bags that were cutting off the circulation in my hands while simultaneously trying to throw car keys on the table, kick my high heels off, and remove sunglasses from my face. I often times feel like a flailing octopus--less the 6 additional arms I would need to be a full-fledged flailing octopus. My boyfriend, Tristan, was helping me with the groceries, and the twins were in-tow.
I started to unload the groceries. I placed fridge food in the fridge. Then the freezer food went into the freezer. I loaded up the pantry with the normal pantry foods. Not particularly "abnormal" from any other grocery shopping unload that I had done in the past--only I realized that I had suddenly started getting really frustrated and annoyed for no apparent reason. I thought that perhaps I was tired. I recently started back working on night shift at the hospital and I have been experiencing the periodic joys of trying to live half of my weeks being partially/completely nocturnal. I was tripping over people and bags of food as I continued on my mission to finish unloading the groceries.
After about 15 minutes of being annoyed I stopped for a moment. I finally realized what was annoying me. My children had taken my cell phone, had switched it to "video mode", and were filming me while I was unloading the groceries--as well as making a video of other random things in the house. They were commentating the entire time. They would walk up to their dolls and say, "And now if you look over here you can see our American Girl dolls". Then they walked over to the computer, still filming, and stated, "And here is our computer game". Then onto more filming me unloading the groceries and saying, "And if you look over here you can see mommy putting the groceries away". I finally asked them to stop.
Let me clarify something here--it's not that it takes a super huge amount of concentration to take Ragu spaghetti sauce out of a grocery bag and place it in the pantry. It's not like they had distracted me to the point of accidentally placing the Listerine and eyeshadow in the refrigerator. It was just that they were using my cell phone battery and memory to film a whole lot of nothing in particular, while commentating, and it had taken me over 15 minutes to figure it out. Tristan started to laugh at me and said, "They are just doing the same thing they were doing while we were in the store". This was true. As we were making our way through the grocery store I had started getting randomly annoyed as well--only to realize that they had taken my cell phone and were filming and commentating each of the items on the shelf in the grocery store. It would be different if these were two isolated incidences, but they had done this to me in the past. I ended up with 30 minutes of video on my phone that they filmed while I was shopping in Victoria's Secret one day at the mall. The video had them holding up lotions, lip gloss, panties, and massage oils--all the while they were reading the labels and making sure they told the camera exactly what was up with their newly found treasures. I didn't have a clue until I got home and saw the video on my phone. I vowed that was the last time I was ever going underwear shopping with my children.
When did I get so oblivious as a parent?--and is it true oblivion or it is self preservation? The irony is that most of the time I KNOW when my children are doing things they are not supposed to be doing--or at least I keep telling myself that I know. Part of me thinks that I've started to ignore some things on purpose because the chronic, unrelenting discipline gets a bit old. Either that or I truly am walking around half asleep these days (which is entirely possible). I can't wait until they get older and have driver's licenses. Then they can take off and be like, "Well mom, I told you I was going to go to ___________ with ___________ and you said, "Uh huh" so you gave me permission." And I will be totally clueless that I ever said such a thing. It's the "You Don't Have Eyeballs in the Back of Your Head so Don't Pretend You Can See Me" phenomenon. My mom used to do this to me. I would ask her to look at something when I was a child and she would not even be turned my direction and say, "Uh huh...I see...". She didn't see. She didn't even know I was talking to her. She was just responding. Ugh--two blogs in a row that I've realized I'VE BECOME MY MOTHER--only I have "delayed response" when it comes to seeing what my children are up to.
*SIGH* That's it--I'm going to start drinking more caffeine so I can have a clue what is going on...in REAL TIME.
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