My sister has one child. A five year old boy. He is nothing less than a prince. If she could carry him around on a pillow and get away with it, she would. I am pretty sure she was still spoon feeding him last year.
We just went on vacation with them. She sent me money ahead of time to get groceries for them. She is horrified by our diet of frozen PB&J sandwiches and partially hydrogenated soybean oil, so I asked her to send me a specific list of what she wanted. I already knew what it would look like; flaxseed, quinoa, organic everything, and liquor.
I prepared to brace myself for a week with the overbearing, label-reading tyrant. I kept my distance in the morning, allowing her ample time in the kitchen to prepare hot breakfasts with slices of fresh fruit for the little prince. She scoffed when I ripped open our pre-packaged bowls of cereal, dumped a shot of milk and a plastic spoon in them and called out "Breakfast!" down the hallway.
She made going to the beach an ordeal, whereas, I just went to the beach. She fretted over the level of SPF not being high enough. Trust me, anything after 50 is a hoax, ok? She fretted over enough toys to play with on the beach. Does she not remember pictures of us as children on the beach? Our toys were seaweed and any kid under the next umbrella. She fretted over the life vest. Yes, I said life vest.
We were on the Gulf Coast; waves no taller than your knees. She dug around in the closet of the condo until she found a life saving apparatus for the prince. An extra-small life vest . She put it on him. It clearly didn't fit. His potbelly stuck way out at the bottom and the straps were at their max. He wasn't happy. No one else was wearing 2 inches of Styrofoam strapped to their torso. But she insisted.
We just went on vacation with them. She sent me money ahead of time to get groceries for them. She is horrified by our diet of frozen PB&J sandwiches and partially hydrogenated soybean oil, so I asked her to send me a specific list of what she wanted. I already knew what it would look like; flaxseed, quinoa, organic everything, and liquor.
I prepared to brace myself for a week with the overbearing, label-reading tyrant. I kept my distance in the morning, allowing her ample time in the kitchen to prepare hot breakfasts with slices of fresh fruit for the little prince. She scoffed when I ripped open our pre-packaged bowls of cereal, dumped a shot of milk and a plastic spoon in them and called out "Breakfast!" down the hallway.
She made going to the beach an ordeal, whereas, I just went to the beach. She fretted over the level of SPF not being high enough. Trust me, anything after 50 is a hoax, ok? She fretted over enough toys to play with on the beach. Does she not remember pictures of us as children on the beach? Our toys were seaweed and any kid under the next umbrella. She fretted over the life vest. Yes, I said life vest.
We were on the Gulf Coast; waves no taller than your knees. She dug around in the closet of the condo until she found a life saving apparatus for the prince. An extra-small life vest . She put it on him. It clearly didn't fit. His potbelly stuck way out at the bottom and the straps were at their max. He wasn't happy. No one else was wearing 2 inches of Styrofoam strapped to their torso. But she insisted.
I was peacefully lying on my beach lounger, trying to forget for a moment that I have small children, when she poked me. "Hey, your daughter is way down there". I lifted my sunglasses to my forehead, expecting to see my daughter miles away, standing on the edge of a pier, ready to drop off or something. Instead, she was about 20 yards from me, playing by herself in the sand. I repositioned my sunglasses onto my eyes, took a swig of beer for good measure and said, "Yeah, so?" My sister then went on to tell me that no one was watching her. I then responded, "Yes they are. That family over there is watching her".
Then came naptime. Everyone knows you don't follow a nap schedule when you are at the beach. You let the kids get good and worn out so they go to sleep at 6 p.m. Not my sister. She laid that kid down for his nappy every day at 1:00 p.m., Chicago time.
Dinner had to be a real dinner, baths must be taken to get that nasty sea water off before fresh p.j.'s were put on, and bedtime required the same book reading ritual that you have during your non-vacation life. I know she saw me throw my kids in the bedroom and switch the lights off. She saw me.
I finally had to tell her that she needed to live a bit, relax. At the end of the week, we decided to go out and have some big people fun. We got a babysitter and headed for some beach bars. This is all right, I thought. She is finally going to be normal again. Then I caught her after her third beer, look across the table at me, move her lips to what appeared to be "Only the second time in my life I've ever left my baby". She got a hefty dose of tequila for those antics and we ended up having a really great time.
The next day she felt rough. There was no hot breakfast on the table at 7:30 a.m. When she finally did wake up, she said "I'm going to go lay by the pool for a bit". I was busy packing so I didn't notice how long she had been gone. When I emerged from our room and walked into the living room, I saw my son and her son, still in their p.j.'s, playing on the iPad, and fifty candy wrappers laying about. When I asked what they had eaten, my son replied "Ramen". I looked down to see an opened package of crumbled, uncooked ramen noodles on the coffee table. My nephew looked at me and said "And we had candeeee"; his teeth were covered in slobber and a pink taffy-like substance.
I panicked. I must have looked like someone trying to feverishly cover up a murder scene. I got on my hands and knees and started picking up wrappers and stray ramen noodles before my sister could discover this neglect of nutrition.
Too late. She walked through the door with a smile on her face. She obviously hadn't seen the wrappers and noodles. I began to apologize, fumbling over my words, trying to rectify the situation, even blaming it on my son, anything to keep her from being angry with me. Instead, her Hawaiian Tropic gleaming body walked over to her son, patted him and said, "He can have candy. We're on vacation".
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