Lessons in Motherhood

It began as just a normal drive home from school – Sophia eating crackers she stole from Hailey’s class, Hailey babbling on about the awesomeness of pre-K, and Mommy muttering curse words under her breath at the traffic. Hailey had gotten a juice box from school and insisted on drinking it in the car.

Let me just interrupt this story to mention that when you are a mother you become somewhat clairvoyant. I don’t know if it’s really claivoyance or some type of mutated spidey-sense that tells you when a fight is brewing between your children even before the circumstances of the soon-to-be-fight have not even been created yet.

My Mommy-sense radar was BLARING when Hailey opened that juice box in the car. I told her, “if you open that juice box then your sister is going to want some, and you’ll have to share with her because it’s not fair that you have a juice box and she doesn’t.” Is your mommy-sense tingling now? Two minutes later, Sophia is SCREAMING for the juice box. I’m driving so I demand that Hailey turn over the juice box to her sister. Hailey, of course, conceded but only after having chugged half the juice box down.

Now, keep in mind that my intentions in this situation were noble, but the outcome did not quite work out as I had hoped. Sophia did not just take a sip of the juice box and return it to Hailey. She decided that it was her juice box now…permanently. Since I was driving, I had to wait until we were at a red light, reach behind my chair and wrestle (quite literally) the juice box out of Sophia’s hand. Of course, the juice was spraying out of the juice box all over Sophia, the chair, the car and my arm.

After securing the juice box for Hailey, Sophia began to scream. Then Hailey, realizing that her juice was all gone, began to whine about how Sophia drank all of her juice. “Technically,” I explained “Sophia did not drink all of your juice, she spilled it while I tried to wrestle it away from her.” Yeah, she wasn’t entertained or comforted by that technicality.

She talked the entire way home about the juice box, but my favorite line was… “Next year, I’m going to be in kindergarten at a different school, and then I won’t have to see my sister any more.” Ouch! Of course, later in the evening they were best friends again running around and making me crazy together.