Mumma is Bored and Cranky...

...is my latest must-use phrase-of-the-month. I don't use it nearly often enough. Why's that? Let me give an example.


Vic Market, thursday last week. Car park is packed, so I slip into a street spot outside. Feed the meter with my single one dollar coin, which gives me...hmmm...


Twenty minutes. For all veggie and meat shopping for the five of us all week. Including the Smaller Girl's birthday party. This is very much not going to happen. Nevertheless, off we set in our trolley to zoom round as fast as possible, and trust to the ticket inspectors schedule to keep them far away from us for the next hour or so.


So we make a good start, grapes, tomatos, 'taters in the bag, and then comes the fateful phrase.


"Mumma! Big Wee!"


This is not going to do our schedule good, but the Big Wee is not to be denied. So off we go to the toilet block.


The toilet block at the market, as it happens, is huge. We're into "pack a bag of sandwiches to make the trek to the far end" territory. It's an embarrassment of riches to someone keen on taking control of the [i]choices[/i] in his life. And making sure that the choice he makes is exactly correct.


You can see where we're going here.

"Daniel! This toilet?"

"Nope. Diffent one"

"Ok, what about this toilet?"

"Nope. Diffent toelet"

"This one?"

"Dis one!"

"That one's got someone in it. Ok, we'll wait."

Half a minute later, person inside comes out. Small Boy promptly transfers his attentions to [i]another[/i] toilet (a previously rejected one) which now has someone in it, who we wait for, and comes out, prompting his transferral of attention to another toilet, and meanwhile the clock on the parking meter is going tick tick tick and I can see the pattern, he's going to work his OCD way all the way back to the first stall, waiting for people to exit toilets all the way, my Bored And Cranky levels are rising to the ceiling, and I crack it and produce the ultimatum "this toilet or NO toilet" which leads to tears, collapse on the floor, and exiting the toilet block with no Big Wee having been performed. (We circled back again 5 minutes later. It was much more successful then)


All of which is the sort of stuff which will have the stricter half of the parenting demographic collapsing with laughter at my wussiness ("just stick him in the first one available FFS!") but in fact mostly when I allow him to make his own choices he does so within a moderately reasonable timeframe, and I've already got "I'm going to fold the clothes - tell me when you've made your mind up." as a well-used response to endless dithering. We don't have a very high-pressure lifestyle, and mostly he does have space to take however long he needs over a decision. Just not on [i]this[/i] particular occasion.


I'm realising that what all this probably looked like from his point of view was: "I'm choosing a toilet...I'm choosing a toilet...la la la...I'm choosing a toilet...I'm choosing a...Hey! Don't pick me up and PUT ME IN THE WRONG ONE!
What are you DOING all of a sudden!" All the sighs and foot-tappings, short phrases, rising tone of voice...they all mean absolutely nothing to him. What he really needs is for the mumma to get down to his level, look him straight in the eye and say "Daniel. Mumma is now Bored And Cranky!"

(and she's not going to take it any more)