The Rottenest Kids in the Neighbourhood

Oh lordie.

I have an amazing neighbourhood. One of those neighbourhoods of long ago, where people sit on their front porches and wave as people pass by, and check in if your son happens to be standing by the road unsupervised at 8:30 in the morning. (Yes, that happened, but I can explain. I just choose not to.) One of the best parts of our neighbourhood is the neighbourhood block party. There was one yesterday, a lovely barbecue up at the end of our street. Tons of people turned up, everyone brought a plate of food for sharing, and there were burgers and dogs supplied by the neighbourhood patriarch Bill. He’s been here the longest, and the houses next to his and across the street from his belong to his offspring. It’s pretty much their neighbourhood, and they invite the rest of us in.

So anyways, we were really looking forward to getting the chance to chat with a lot of the people that we just wave at usually. We didn’t take into account the fact that we were bringing our children, who happen to be the Rottenest. Kids. In. The. Neighbourhood. I had envisioned a fun little barbecue with kids running around playing with each other, maybe running up to the snack table and grabbing some food, etc. What I got was a couple of sullen and unhappy whiners that would not eat.

The first problem was Skyler’s somewhat new paralyzing fear of dogs. So of course when I gave her a hotdog and sat her in a lawn chair, a friendly border collie ambled over to sniff at her toes. And Skyler started SCREAMING BLUE MURDER. “NO NO NO NOOOOOOOOOOOOO AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Hey, that’s not embarrassing at all, Sky-Pie! Way to set the mood!

Yesterday morning we had taken off Marcus’s training wheels so he could learn how to ride a two-wheeler. He had some good runs but needed a ton of assistance starting off. Let’s call him a pre-novice. When we got up to the barbecue we saw five-year-old Eva was proudly riding around on HER two-wheeler, which she had just learned to ride. Of course Marcus wanted to go get his bike, and seemed to have forgotten that he could barely ride it. He was so eager to show off his two-wheeler he didn’t stop to think that he could not actually RIDE it. We finally agreed that he could run down to the house to get his bike, but that we would NOT be helping him ride as we were visiting. Ya, that’ll go well.

Flash forward twenty minutes: BOTH kids are crying and screaming and being MISERABLE and NOT eating their dinners even though they’re starving. We scooped them up, brought them home and put them in their bedrooms for the longest. Timeout. EVER. Then, when they came out, I said, “Are you guys hungry now?” and they nodded and said, “Yes, we’re real hungry.” And I said, “Well, that was DINNER that we had up at the barbecue, and you chose not to eat it. “ So that at least evened up the score a little, even though right now we’re sitting at Kids: 1 048 083, Parents: 2. Actually, we’re at 1.5, because I caved a little before bed and gave them a snack. But not a big snack. So there.

Oh yeah, the dog thing. We’ve decided we’re going to start borrowing our neighbour’s dog to walk every once in a while to get them used to dogs, because this is ridiculous. Nothing like starting life with a crippling fear of something that is EVERYWHERE.