It's a lot of togetherness when you stop to think about it. The kids have all been in school pretty full time since September and that's been just fine. We got into a schedule, a rhythm, if you will. Then we get to Christmas and it's suddenly two weeks of total togetherness. Full immersion. No escape.
Christmas is fun and New Year's Eve is fun. Plus you've got some cool parties sprinkled in there for flavor but let's be honest, when you get to that final Sunday evening, when you know they'll be headed back to school, you're relieved. All of you. You're absolutely at the limit of what you can take.
We'd been to a party that Sunday night (that I wasn't so hot to go to in the first place) and had been on the road a lot during the day. The party provided a lovely dinner but when we got home the kids asked "What's for dinner?" Seriously? You JUST ATE. So I started to scrounge around to see what we had. The fridge was a mess. Weird holiday leftovers, no milk and certainly nothing that could be considered dinner (egg nog anyone?). But I pulled a MacGyver and got it done. It wasn't pretty, probably wasn't even good, but they were fed.
I told the kids I was excited because Downton Abbey was going to be on for the first episode of the series. They KNOW how much I love that show. Still. Max insisted on coming into my room and annoying me about every 15 minutes throughout the entire show. When he wasn't entering my room, he was teasing his sister or making the dog bark like crazy. Then Zoe would come in to complain about him, interrupting my show. I. Was. Done.
And then it happened.
He was screwing around and shooting rubber bands and Nerf darts at the dog who was laying on the bed with me. She was getting agitated and so was I. I told him to knock it off. I mean it. Knock if off. But he didn't. He shot one last dart and it hit me square in the eye. Everything went into slow motion. He gasped, Zoe cried out, the dog barked and I grabbed my eye and started crying. I mean really crying. I fell off the bed, still holding my eye, and said "We might need to call 911."
Ok. To clarify. Did I overreact? Yes, Of COURSE I did. I'm not an idiot. I get it. But the tears were not all related to the dart in the eye. Obviously. I mean it hurt and all but I was DONE and this was the last straw. I could not hold it together and just openly sobbed. Max was going crazy. He ran to the bathroom to get a cool cloth for my eye, brought it to me and said, "Mom, are you ok? I'm so sorry! Use this cloth on your eye, it will help."
I probably should have responded better to his concern, you know encouraged him and used it as a teachable moment. Instead.
"SEE?" I shouted. "See what happens when you don't listen? People GET HURT."
He shrank away from me.
Listen, I know when I'm being the "Dragon Mom". The mom with the crazy, scary voice reserved only for the most serious offenses. And this was it. Full on. All of the stress I had felt leading up to the holidays, making sure everything was done and everything was magical was being unleashed on my kid. It's a lot of pressure handling everything and everyone was counting on me to make it perfect. Right down to gifts for the dog's stocking. Aside from all that, my eye did actually hurt and I thought, at least for a moment, that I had a corneal abrasion.
But I did not have a corneal abrasion. The next night we had a planned rubber band gun/Nerf gun war in the house but I wore ski goggles to avoid another incident. At one point, Zoe and I pinned Max down and were shooting him repeatedly. Sometimes it's good to get your aggression out but hitting him with the actual gun was probably going too far. Way to be - Zoe.
