Temperament Traits OR Who are you and what have you done with my children?

I have always been fascinated by birth order, familial temperaments, etc. It is amazing to me how siblings, who come from the same gene pool, can be so amazingly different. Lately, I have also found that these same small people’s personalities can morph from one cute cuddly cherub in one moment into some one-eyed-one-horned-flyin’-purple people-eater the next.

The school where I work is closed for its annual 2 week summer break so I have been with the children around the clock. The baby-sitter, a.k.a the nanny, is also off for her annual 2 week break from my heathens. (Mental note to self: this woman needs a HUGE raise.) This afternoon, while watching the recycle truck with youngest Alex, we saw our neighbor who has a 2 month old. Of course, Alex, being the social being that all 2-almost-3 year olds are, announced, “I greet him.” After visiting with him for a while, my earlier thoughts are totally reinforced. The baby is now sleeping for 4-6 hours at a time in what my friend, Cindy, calls the potted plant stage. You can put them in one place, much like, well, a potted plant, and they stay there. They don’t DO anything. My children have outgrown that phase and currently resemble the life sized Venus Flytrap in “The Little Shop of Horrors.” I swear I just heard the phrase, “Feed me, Seymore!” come from someone’s mouth.

Another thing that I am confounded about is their physical resilience. As many of you may know, Alex had a fun-filled visit to the E.R. to superglue the gash to his forehead he assumed after tripping and hitting a shelf. His bounce-back fortitude (and my well planned seating arrangement next to the nurses’ station) managed to get us out and back in action in under 4 hours. Yesterday, middle child Simon, fractured his finger while playing Wii tennis. I know, no, I’m not kidding. He was following through with a forehand shot, perfect form I might add, when his right ring finger came into contact, rather forcefully, with a point on the entertainment center. The finger, on both sides, turned a heinous purple in a matter of moments regardless of the ice we immediately applied. Of course, I got yelled at for “hurting” his finger while applying the ice and was informed that he was fine and needed to get back to finish the game. Seriously?!?! Who was this person? I told oldest Christopher that he would spend the remainder of the summer enveloped in bubblewrap because I simply couldn’t take any more and he was the only one left who hadn’t expended a co-pay.

Really – I clearly remember the births of each of my children. Okay, so they all cried upon delivery and maybe I should have taken note of this for days to come, but these aren’t the same small beings to whom I gave birth. They were small, wrapped in blankets, and they smelled delicious! They cooed, looked into my eyes with awe and devotion, and slept in my arms. What the hell happened?

After all the drama with Simon’s finger, youngest Alex was running around with a small rubber Hotwheels car tire in his mouth. When I finally cornered him and put my hand to his mouth to spit it out, he looked at me, smiled, and gulped – rather loudly. He swallowed it on purpose! While trying to watch a movie last night, middle child Simon felt compelled to comment on almost every single scene, take polls, and add suggestions. Might I add that the movie was one that every member of our family had seen at least half a dozen times? He totally suffers from middle-child syndrome and I swear he is going to bust out with “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha!” sometime soon.

Sometimes I wonder what I did differently that made them the way they are. Did I spend enough “quality time” with them? By the way, what is “quality time” anyway? I know we all have heard the adage of “It’s the quality of the time and not the quantity of time we spend with our children.” Clearly this statement was made by a mother who was suffering from mommy-guilt at trying to figure out how to bring home the bacon AND fry it up in the pan, along with baking cupcakes at 11:00 p.m. for a child’s class party, wash clothes, and be the sexy vixen her spouse married before he forgot how to participate in household management.

Maybe it wasn’t me. Maybe it was genetics, and G-d’s will. Lord knows, my children’s personalities all resemble some blood relative of either mine or my husband. That alone scares the bejeebers out of me. I also have to say that all my well-founded opinions of child rearing I had before I actually had children have leapt out the window. Every statement that started with, “When I have children, they will/will never…” has come back to bite me in the you-know-what big time. Maybe it was the curse that all mothers’ put on their offspring when they utter those infamous words: “I hope you have a child just like you when you grow up!”

So here I am at the end of the day. Confounded and confused. Exhausted and defeated. Yet, at the same time, I feel so fortunate to witness this utter madness day in and day out. I still don’t have any more answers to the big parenting questions today than I did the day they each were born. I still get a kick out of each new twist. Okay, so initially I’m not so receptive but I eventually get it that they are finding their ways. They are learning who, with my assistance and guidance, they are in this continuum of life. While they might not listen during the first, third, fifth, etc., times I talk; when I see one of them helping a stranger, or greeting a neighbor, I realize the importance of my role. THIS, is what I signed up for…