The Club

Well, I'm not sure when the welcome invitation comes, but I'm fairly sure I am now eligible for entry into the "hated mothers" club. I got my first "Momma, I don't love you anymore!" the other day. Thankfully, the blow was softened a bit by equal irritation at Garrett with "Daddy, I don't love you anymore, either!".  Does it hurt? A bit, but to be honest, my perspective appears different than most other mothers, at least it seems that way.
It's funny, the other day, someone who I hadn't seen in over a year asked, "How are the girls adjusting?". After all the anxiety over healthy transitions into our home, the "I don't love you" comments have cemented the fact that we have two very normal and well adjusted children. It's a phrase that is more sweet than bitter to this Momma's ears. It only means that Macie trusts us enough to know that she isn't going anywhere and that she can feel any emotion without fear of loss of her family. The power in the words is little. The safety she feels in the freedom to say it speaks much louder to me.
On a funny note, while Macie is finding her own 4-year-old ways of testing, her vocabulary and comprehension skills are exploding. Her sentences are 6-8 words now and she clearly expresses a tremendous desire to learn. That said, sometimes the shorter statements bring me just as much joy as the longer ones. Just the other day, we were watching a video where one of the characters was stuck in sand and was left there to wait for help. While this poor guy was describing how long he had been there and uncomfortable he was, Macie looked up at me, tilted her head and very matter-of-factly said "Well, that sucks.".  She got a big grin out of me for that one.
Ella, on the other hand, has hit the stubborn part of her twos and is learning that boundaries don't budge much around here.
Silly parents that we are, we picked a battle that we shouldn't have (something we are still learning to discern), and after seeing Ella exit her bedroom one morning with her pants on backwards, we asked her to fix them (mind you we are well aware of her abilities and knowledge of front and back). She returned to her room, threw a bit of a fit and came out with her pants in hand looking at us like a lost puppy. She was directed back to her room where, after 10 minutes of screaming followed by 3 minutes of quiet, she exited. Her appearance was clearly intentional.
Our sweet, innocent Ella had tucked her bright green shirt into her dark brown pants which were clearly put on backwards. She had then taken the added step of rolling the waist of them down a single roll with the tag very clearly pulled out over her shirt. With both pointer fingers holding the tag of her pants directly over her shirted bellybutton her expression was one of obvious disgust at being challenged in what was now, to her, a very significant area of control.
It took everything I had in me to not roll on the floor laughing as I redirected her BACK to her room again. The battle continued for more than a few trips, but once lunchtime came around, her hunger outweighed her stubborn streak and she was suddenly more than capable of turning her pants around and apologizing to Momma and Daddy.
We wasted WAY too much of a perfectly good morning battling a two year old, but we got our point across. Parenting is an ongoing education.
I love my kids. They drive me insane some times, but I love them.