Monday, February 28, 2005

Being Completely Stupid, or Why I'm a Bad Mom

This evening I had one of those situations that just makes you feel like the biggest pile of crap ever. The other day, Will went up to Ryan and said he had hiccups and needed to be scared. I have no idea of Ryan yelling "BOO!!!" at him a few seconds later actually made his hiccups go away, but for some reason when I was going upstairs this evening I was thinking about that and I decided to sneak up on Will and give him a scare. I determined he was in the "new room" with the door closed, listening to Beatles music, and even maybe dancing around some, so I burst in and yelled "BOO!!!" as loud as I could.

At which point my sweet baby spun around with a horrified expression on his face and burst into tears.

Now, I know better than this. It wasn't too long ago that we were watching a Kings' game and when Mike Bibby sank a three-pointer to tie the game right at the buzzer, Ryan and I both yelled "YES!!!" so loud that Will, who'd been sitting there playing with his K'Nex and minding his own business, shrieked in terror and sobbed. (And then they still lost in overtime.) So it's not like this sort of thing is without precedent, and I really don't know what I was thinking.

Of course I went right in and hugged him and apologized profusely, but I wasn't quite done trying to get myself off the hook, so I explained that I thought he might have hiccups so I decided to scare them out of him. He pointed out, through his tears, that you really need to check and make sure someone has hiccups before you do that too them, which of course is absolutely true and made me feel worse. I kept rubbing his back and finally said that I was just trying to be funny, and I realized that it was a mistake and apologized again, which he seemed to accept. Then I told him the great thing was that he got to pay me back and scare me sometime. Mr. Finesse that he is, he proceeded to do so three times within 10 minutes -- only once with much success -- at which point I told him he'd probably paid me back, and he agreed and seemed cheerful.

Anyway, another lesson learned. The kid is a little fragile. I won't mess with him like that again.

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