The King of Making Me Crazy

Child 1 is really bad at waiting. Most kids are. Shit, most grownups are. I'M really bad at waiting. Child 1, however, seems to have perfected the art of Making Me Fucking Crazy, particularly when it's getting close to dinner time.

We have a pretty regular schedule, time-wise. After we get home from school, they get snacks, and we have a few hours in which to fuck around to our heart's content. This is usually when I do all my blogging and blog reading. We probably should be doing homework during these few hours, but that is clearly not what actually happens. Then at 6:00 I will get up and start making dinner. Hubs is never home at this time, and will not be home for at least a few hours, so my dinner making is just for the boys and myself. There's always a bit of negotiation required before I decide what to make, because if they don't both agree on something, at least one of them is going to have a fucking hissy fit and refuse to eat anything. (You know how they always tell parents that we have to pick our battles? Well, I lost the food battle a looooong time ago. I'll blog about it some day) So, we usually have a discussion about it beforehand. There are very few things that they both agree on, and dinner making never usually takes very long.

Child 1 is apparently going through some kind of freaky-ass growth spurt, because lately he has been constantly eating. The minute we walk through the door, he wants food, and he would continue eating all night long if I allowed it. He's still really fucking skinny, though, so I try not to stress too much about it (I have food issues; I'll blog about those at a later date, too). He can also tell time, and he knows that I get up at 6:00pm to start making dinner, and the minute I walk into the kitchen to start cooking, he starts pestering me constantly with the following non-stop barrage of questions:

"How many minutes until dinner is ready?"

"What can I have while I wait?"

"HOW many minutes until dinner is ready?"

"What can I eat while I wait?"

"Why can't I eat something while I wait?"

"Can I just have one thing while I wait?"

"How many more minutes until dinner is ready?"

My answers to these questions are usually:

"Three minutes."

"Nothing."

"Three minutes."

"Nothing."

"Because dinner will be ready in three minutes."

"No you can't."

"Three minutes."

GAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This will go on for the entire duration of dinner preparation, which doesn't usually take three minutes... sometimes it can take longer. If it takes too long, he's likely to start crying and hanging onto me, thus preventing me from actually doing any cooking, and making it take even longer for dinner to be ready. I try to get him engaged in something else, or just to leave the kitchen and leave me the fuck alone, but that never works. He wants to be in the kitchen, badgering me, and so, that's where he will stay.

Finally it's ready and finally he gets to eat, which he usually does pretty well as long as it's something that's been previously negotiated and approved, and then about 10 minutes after he's done, it starts again.....

"What can I have now?"

"Why can't I have anything else?"

"How many minutes until I can have something else?"

GAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!

---