Saturday Night Social

It's funny how simple plans for a Saturday night can go awry. We thought we'd head out to a fundraiser/birthday party a few towns away. But then the tantrum started. I never know to expect them when there's no obvious trigger, and this evening there wasn't one.

I'd been out for a nice long walk earlier in the day with Noah. We stopped at a local coffee bar afterwards, and he got a bottle of water and some marble loaf cake. We stopped at Waldbaum's as I'd promised we would, so he could look for his lemon poppy seed muffins. No luck in finding the muffins, but he did score two bags of tortilla chips, another favorite snack.

Not sure exactly when or why things went off the rails, but they did. And they've been off for a while now. We've been hearing a lot of, "three times I said you be quiet!" or "three times I said you be happy!" Then of course there's "I said shut up to my sister!"

There was resistance to the dinner options offered to Noah. I told him to take whatever he wanted. No good. Back to "three times I said you be quiet!" and "you be happy!" In response to Noah's repeated statements about telling his sister to shut up, I finally chimed in and told him to shut up. Hey, if you can't beat the nut job you're with, maybe you'll feel better joining him.

I'm glad my daughter had a good day with her friends. Maybe that takes some of the edge off the misery of listening to her brother go round and round with his own stupidity, and listening to her parents alternatively engage and ignore him.

Not the most fun we've had on a Saturday night in our house, but not atypical.

When I was out walking with Noah this morning, I thought about the charming silliness of some of our conversations, as the one we were having then, when Noah asked if he was pretty and I said, "No, but you're pretty handsome." And he said, "I'm pretty pretty." Love that quirky, silly young man. I love the nut he became this evening too. I just don't like that version of him very much.