Thanksgiving

So I couldn't come up with a way to get out of going with the Hedgehog to his mom's house today. Mostly it was because he was so damned supportive and told me to stop freaking out. See, one of the benefits of this blog is that, as a socially awkward person who's terrified of confrontation, I can put my thoughts up here that I could never say aloud, because writing on the internet doesn't scare me as much.

Because on the internet, I feel like a boss.

This means the Hedgehog saw my last post, laughed at the thought of me trying to sneak off, told me I was ridiculous, and we had a normal conversation about how I should handle Thanksgiving today.

I felt like someone going into battle...

So I spent the whole day laughing with his step-sisters, both of which are either just going into high school or already are, but both of them are hilarious and awesome so it doesn't matter, and I pretty much felt like I actually fit in for once, aside from some awkwardness. See, I met them before and they make me feel comfortable, so I'm just fine with them.

... Whaddaya know...? This isn't so bad...! Whooo!

When it came time to come home, however, both the Hedgehog's mom and the Terror's mom offered to drive us. At the same time. In the same car. I thought this would be the confrontation I'd been expecting...

Oh gods...

Except it never happened...



Surprisingly, this makes me feel worse.

But they're driving the Hedgehog to work, so I'm almost positive it's happening there... or worse, they'll drive back and talk to me... alone... without the Hedgehog... oh gods...
Edit: It's been 45 minutes, so they're not coming back.

Still terrified.

In fact, the only thing I do know at this point, is that there's a 99% chance I won't be watching the Terror ever again...


... She's my Chick Pea...

Edit: Okay, so they didn't talk to the Hedgehog either... but even he agreed it was suspicious and he'd been a little weirded out when they didn't talk to us on the way home.

Worst 50th Post Ever

... You know how I'm an easily terrified person? My mind sits and thinks about how things can go wrong so I'm always prepared, but sometimes something happens that even I haven't thought of; maybe it's something so good my brain thinks it's a trick, or maybe it's something so bad that all of my instincts scream at me to run before something worse happens.

This has happened to me a lot in the past, but only in the years after I lost my mom. After I lost her, I changed. I couldn't take confrontation, couldn't handle change... Believe it or not, I didn't get terrified at every little thing that might go wrong. I've run a lot. Get in a fight with my dad? Run. Get in a fight with a friend? Run, then make excuses not to talk to them. Get in a fight with my dad's Girl-Fiend? Get forced into a fight with her, then run.

Tonight's no different, either.

See, apparently the Terror (oh gods, should I be calling her that...?) had a bruise. I saw it today, she showed it to me. I figured it came from either when she made me pick her up and carry her away from the door while she was kicking and screaming, or from when her dad had to haul her up last night. Either way, it was getting blamed on me... Remember my fear of the Hedgehog's family hating me? Thinking me a horrible person? Yeah, well it happened, apparently... They are mad at me...

And every single fiber of my being is screaming at me to run, trying to come up with plans so I can avoid confrontation all together. Even horrible stuff I would never do my brain is thinking of. Everything from "fake sick so you have to stay home on Thanksgiving and not talk to them" to "get up after the Hedgehog goes to sleep and walk away, we'll figure it out from there."

... What kind of horrible person am I if I'm thinking of running off in the middle of the night without saying goodbye to my Hedgehog? Or even that I love him? What kind of twisted, selfish, cruel-hearted person would do that?

I'm terrified the answer is me...

This Child is Planning on Killing Me

 ... I have a sneaking suspicion that the Terror is planning on killing me... After all, I spent most of the day yelling at her thanks to a new annoying habit she has of eating two bites, throwing the food away, saying she's finished, and then telling me she's hungry...

I'm full, I'm done eating... Can I have a snack, I'm hungry...

Not to mention she's continuing her trend of asking me the same questions repeatedly in a row, ignoring me when I'm talking to her so I have to repeat myself until my throat is hoarse to elicit a response from her, and just plain ignoring what I'm telling her.

What time is it? Is it four yet? What time is it? Is it four yet?

This is her playing with glass cups I told her to not touch 5 mins before.

Get up. Get up. Stand up. Get up. Getupgetupgetup.

I have a sneaking suspicion she has no short term memory. Also, remember that picture at the top of this post? That's her reaction after I took those glass cups away.

Don't You Make Me Come Get You!

How could you be so stupid, me?

... I can't believe this child made me chase her down... again. I can't believe I made the mistake of letting her play outside again... again. Honestly, when am I ever gonna learn? Do I have some kind of chronic brain problem that makes learning from past mistakes impossible?

 It's just the Terror's been so... terrible today. All day long she's stared at me in that strangely blank but vaguely sad and confused way she has, making me repeat everything innumerable times.

"Stop. Stop it. I said stop. Stop right now!"

 "Let the dog go. Let Noodles go. Stop it, let him go, he wants down."

 "Close the fridge, you just ate and you didn't even finish your food. Close it. No, you just ate."

 "Pick that up. Pick it up. Pick it up. Pick up your mess."

"Let him go. Leave him alone."

"Get up. Get up and let Noodles out. Get up. Up. Up. Up!"

That last one was followed by, "Don't make me come get you..." She stood up and started inching away, and when I stood, she bolted. I chased her down the stairs and around the back of the house before I could snatch her up without hurting her...

Update: Ugh, she just made me have to get up and turn her back around in the timeout chair after she tried to play with Noodles and watch cartoons... Which is impossible because the kitchen is blocked off from the television...

Update: ... And after explaining again how timeout starts when she's quiet, she tried to get Noodles to come over to her... again...

Edit: This is my 45th post...

I Need A Job

Forewarning: I am angry. That is all.

I had been planning on writing this post out when I could think clearly about the events of the 11th when I had to watch both the Spawn and the Terror, and in fact was going to put it up today. After all, I had calmed down significantly since then and could think objectively about the whole day... Last Friday I was supposed to be paid. Now, if you read this blog, you might think I've been paid a couple of times since the first post on this blog... Well, I haven't. Today was only the second time I've ever been paid since I started watching the Terror.


The first time I got paid $85. Today? I got $80. I did the math on that... I'm still pretty much getting paid $8.50 a day to watch her kid.

Alright, deep breath Kit, don't get mad... just tell everyone what you planned...

On the 11th I had to watch both of the kids at the same time, and as you may know, the Spawn seems to think it's his job to terrorize the Terror and get her behavior going a thousand times worse. He was okay first thing in the morning because he was focused on his game, but... he beat it, and not 30 minutes after my post, he came out of his room and helped to cause near non-stop chaos for the rest of the day.

On top of their usual behavior of dashing up and down the hall and jumping on the couch, the talk of buttholes continued... non-stop... through every conversation... no matter what they were playing. Sometimes they changed it up and talked about dooky. I got them to stop for all of 15 minutes when I made up a game where they could only use five words to talk, all really weird words, like "ceiling fan"... That occupied them until the Terror kept on talking about poop and butts... I couldn't make it stop.

Before I move on, I will tell you the good things that happened: we all had a good laugh over the questions for the FAQ and my answers, and I had a couple of nice game conversations with the Spawn... There was even a kind of touching moment when I explained that when I was yelling at them to stop, I was yelling at both of them, not just him. They were both doing things that were wrong, and he should tell me when she was bothering him, so I could take care of it...

... You know, as opposed to getting a hard pillow and slamming it across her face while screaming at her.

That was pretty much the only good things that happened. The rest of the day was spent trying to make them play nice with each other, trying to get the Terror to stop trying to shove her finger up his butt, to leave him alone when he wanted to go back to play his game, to get him to share with her...

They had pillow fights and wrestled and stacked pillows on each other and jumped off of the couches onto each other, and for the most part... I let them. So long as they weren't screaming or arguing, I let them be and play with each other.

I could remember being six and playing with my older brother. My older brother terrorized me. We were both in Judo, so he called it "practice" and my aunt let him pound my head repeatedly into the floor or ground while they watched. Also, he was in football, and would use me as a target to practice tackling.

While the Terror and the Spawn pretty much screamed and hollered non-stop and made me wanna strangle something, they pretty much were having fun. Aside from taking an iPhone or iPod (don't own one and can't tell the difference nowadays...) and recording him talking and not sharing, and above incident where she was bothering him and he wailed on her, and all the times she tried to shove her finger up his butt, they played pretty well with each other.

Of course, that doesn't mean they didn't drive me nuts with the constant chaos, and the Spawn played his usual game of ignoring my authority and laughing at me when I tried to get them to stop, or getting way too offended and storming off... But talking with the Hedgehog cleared all that up later. You have to feel sorry for a kid who thinks everything's his fault.

So looking back on it, it wasn't as bad as it could've been... even though they made fun of me and hit me in the head with a pillow when my back was turned, said I had a "monster face" and that I was fat.

But my point is... would you deal with all of this for $8.50 a day?

And would you really pay the person who watches your precious child from 8am to 8pm some nights for 3 or 4 days a week so little...?

Happiness Forever

On the way home from watching the Terror and the Spawn today, a day so awful I'm reluctant to even begin making pictures of the chaos for a blog post, I saw something magical...

I saw a shooting star...

 I closed my eyes and wished the first wish I could wish for: I wished the Hedgehog and I could be together and happy forever.

When the father of the Spawn and Terror dropped me off in the parking lot, it was to see that Hedgehog was only just leaving for work. He was running a little late. This never happens. I never get to see him right as he's leaving when I've been watching the Terror, and he's rarely if ever late. We talked a bit and he told me we had internet again, he'd paid it for the month, and I let off a bit of steam about the day, and I promised to meet him at work like I hadn't done in forever, and I went inside.

This is something like what the apartment looked like when I left this morning:

Only worse.

And this is what I came home to:

Gods above, he must've been bored out of his mind to do this!

... After my day... this was amazing... I also felt the usual horror of being so bad at being an adult he had to be one for me, but dear gods above, he cleaned the whole thing!

Looking to be in for a Rough One

It returns!

Today's a day off from school for the Spawn, so he's home, and unlike yesterday when he came home early, I don't have the Hedgehog and his little sister helping me keep an eye on the Terror and the Spawn...

Seriously, this kid is part monkey.

 Surprisingly it's been okay, though. See, the Spawn just got Call of Duty, so he's been in his room hole'd up with his PS3 and big flat screen tv... Me and the Hedgehog don't even have a tv half that nice... Gods I wish I could be a kid again when I see stuff like this.

Anyway, he's actually been a pretty good kid. We had a whole little conversation about his game while he was heating up pizza, and he never mentioned butts. I was really amused by his monkey-like abilities to jump onto the counter to get a plate out of the cabinet, too. All in all it was kind of weird and fun to see that he wasn't trying to out terrorize the Terror.

After he left, though, the Terror thought it would be fun to try and gnaw Noodles's ear off, despite the fact the dog was sitting on her lap screaming. After yelling at her to quit, stop, and let the dog go, I came over and had to forcibly pry her arms off from around the dog... Screaming at the top of her lungs, I put her in timeout.

She sat there doing that awful thing she does where she just screams short little "ah" sounds while staring at me as if trying to force me to go insane. When she finally began to quiet five minutes later, I informed her that she would stay in the chair until she stopped screaming, and then, and only then, would I start counting her five minutes of timeout... That shut her up instantly.

I had thought yesterday's lesson from her aunt that you could walk out of timeout had been forgotten, but...

The time had just gone to the end of her five minutes when there was movement out of the corner of my vision... the Terror was attempting to sneak down the hallway while I wasn't looking. So I grabbed her real quick and set her back in the corner, pointing at the clock on the stove. "See this? Your five minutes were up, I was just about to let you out, but because you went to sneak out, you have to go back for five more minutes."

So she sat in the chair and alternated between her forceful "ah"s and sobbing and whining to herself...

It's not even lunchtime yet.

Creepy Conversation of the Day

(The color changes in the next pic... tried to find a more tile-y color...)

So yesterday wasn’t too bad of a day with the Terror… I mean, she was a real, horrible, Terror yesterday, but the Hedgehog had the day off of work so he was there, and his little sister came over for a while, so the Terror wasn’t focused terribly on me… Still, she pitched an ever loving screaming fit because the Spawn and the Hedgehog’s little sis wouldn’t play with her? Or something like that… So to punish her for being bad I put her in timeout like I always do.

Timeout is a chair in the corner of the kitchen. Sometimes she sits and whimpers quietly for five minutes, sometimes she sits and screams and tries to move and I have to bump it up to ten minutes… Guess which one she did this time?

Not pictured here: a weeks worth of dirty dishes, and sanity.

 Oh, and when she sits and screams, she does it purposely, meaningfully, emphasizing each individual scream. And if I make the mistake of looking back at her she stares forcefully into my eyes, screaming short little blasts of “ah”!

"Ah! Ah! Aahh! Ah! Aaaah! Ah!"

"AH! AAAAHHHH! CAN'T YOU SEE I'M SUFFERING?!"

Well, while ignoring her so that she understands this won’t get her her way, Hedgehog’s sister came out, saw her in the kitchen, and told her, “If you want out of the chair, just get out of it.” and so the Terror did so… I may have lied when telling this to the Hedgehog by telling him that his sister picked the Terror up and moved her, because honestly… his little sister is scary and intimidating to my “shy-just-getting-to-know-you-and-therefore-not-comfortable-speaking” stage I go through. Normal me would like her, but for now she’s loud and aggressive and yells a lot at everything.

… All I could think was that my authority had been undermined… Whether purposeful or not (and I doubt it was, though she had to know that the chair in the corner was timeout) it put a thought in the Terror’s head: she could get away with anything, timeout was no longer a punishment…

I know this because a few hours later she got into raw cookie dough and huddled in a corner trying to eat it quickly before anyone noticed… right behind me… while my back was turned… I who thought she was just being a weird kid staring over my shoulder making slurping noises.

And I could’ve prevented it, too, if I’d spoken up earlier in the day when the Hedgehog’s sister had given her a chunk of the cookie dough. I could’ve said, “No, that’s your older sister’s, I don’t think she should have that”, but instead I clamed up and worried about how if I spoke up she’d hate me… But the Terror suddenly saw that the cookie dough was something she could have, and she did so…

When she got yelled at for doing it, she crawled under the table and proceeded to drag herself across the floor, looking pathetic and shoving at anything within arm’s length…

In fact, the only not bad thing that really happened with her today was a creepy conversation we had. See, after the Terror woke up I asked what she wanted for breakfast. Normally she wants pbj, because she freaking loves the stuff, but for the past couple of days she’s wanted toast instead. So I toasted her some bread and was looking for a butter knife, but all the forks and butter knives were dirty. Well, thinking she could help, the Terror grabbed the only knife left and thrust it at me, so I had to talk to her about how certain things are only for adults… (Apparently telling her how cars are only for adults doesn’t work, because the Hedgehog’s little sister lets her drive sometimes… Seeing a trend here...)

While telling her about this, we had this conversation:

Me: Knives are only for adults.
Terror: But mommy uses them.
Me: Well, mommy’s an adult.
Terror: She uses this one on her toe!

I was caught so off guard, I lapsed straight into, “Ugh, ew! That’s so disgusting!”

I then, because you should never tell a small child their mother is disgusting, had to cover it up quickly by saying that the Terror should never do such a thing… but I couldn’t help but ask why her mom used it that way.

Terror: Because her toe hurts.

… And the knife solves this problem?!

Inability to Learn + Complacency = Repeat Incident

 Something strange has been happening for the past week...

The Terror has been good...

... Not just good, either... but amazing...

She's started to learn her numbers to the point where I don't have to talk down to her in that annoying  voice I hate using when she asks me a billion questions about the time. In fact, she's gotten so good that all I have to do is point at the clock and she can tell me what the time is. Of course, she still doesn't  have the finer points of time down yet, but she knows that four comes after 1 and that she has to wait... She still doesn't understand what an hour is, but things have been better...

The Terror has finally begun to understand letters, too. She can finally sing her ABC's without getting really confused, and just yesterday she managed to read off the name of a popular kids show about two inventing cartoon brothers while I was flipping through the guide trying to find her the cartoons she was demanding. It amazed me so much I almost danced.

In fact, the Terror has been learning a lot of things lately, and has been amazingly adorable and not very Terror-like... It took an hour of struggling, but I taught her how to draw a triangle... Yes,  it was one of those things that broke my heart a little and made me wanna kill something, because spending an hour going, "Nooooo. Straaaaight lines, not cuurrrved..." just does that to you.

We even learned how to play pretend last week! She was so good, staying in the yard and playing with her dragons and unicorns as she played princess. She didn't chase after Noodles when he ran out of the yard, she was real good and stayed in the yard, running in every so often to announce, "I found another dragon!"

She was so cute I started calling her my little Chick Pea.

As the Hedgehog has blatantly told me, however, the Terror often has these moments... and they are short, as she quickly relapses into usual Terror behavior. I learned this the hard way, because yesterday I let her play in the yard again. I opened the door and the blinds and watched her playing, but right away I began to notice there was something a little different. She was running in and out constantly complaining about Noodles, and the more I told her to leave him alone and play, the more she complained.

Finally I went outside to tell her when he went to run off with a neighborhood dog to just let them play, it was alright.

The moment I came back inside, I looked out the window and saw an all too familiar scene...

So I ran back out and yelled without thinking, managing to get the Terror back into the yard... but then she started to do that thing that the Terror does that drives me nuts. She froze, didn't move... just stood there with her head bowed, face like that of someone who only speaks English now in a country where no one did. She looked confused, worried... so I told her to come inside...

 The Terror just stood there, blank stare on her face, looking at the ground without moving... I tried a few more times, and the finally, frustrated, yelled that either she came in or I went to get her, and she wasn't going to like it if I did. Another moment of standing there, staring with this confused face at nothing, and I finally went to go get her...

And that's when she took off running like a bat out of hell.

Oh yeah, I caught the Terror and I gave her ten minutes of timeout, but still... Why don't I learn?