Why moms yell

Yesterday started out pleasantly. My sweet little boy brought me breakfast in bed--a big, heaping plate of chocolate chip granola bars, caramel rice cakes, and cherry danish (I think the breakfast theme was sugar). Oh, and some sort of sour gummy worm rolled in sugar, which he hoped would put me in a generous mood--enough to reward him with breakfast gummy worms as well.

He also had a can of whipped cream, and when I asked what he was gonna do with that, he said, "Shoot it in my mouth!" Duh! Like, who doesn't know whipped cream is breakfast food???

All this was presented on two cascading plates covered in paper towels--he's watched enough Top Chef to know plating is an art.

"You can have breakfast in bed!" he exclaimed, spilling crushed rice cakes onto my sheets. I kissed him, told him how wonderful he was, and declined the offer.

"Those crumbly bits might hurt later," I said, and he agreed.

And then, as though that one good deed had depleted him of any remaining common sense, he lapsed into a series of misjudgments. He went outside with strict instructions to stay away from the broken slate tiles--and promptly ran them over with his bike five times. For good measure, he also ran over an aloe vera plant.

He dragged a bag of potting soil over to me, and instead of pouring it into the pot, he dumped it ceremoniously into the grass all around the pot.

He turned the T.V. on to the most disgusting show he could find, and then cranked the volume up so I could hear cartoon characters vomiting from the other side of the house.

He yelled, "What? WHY??" when I asked him to put away the reading books he'd scattered throughout the house. He protested by taking the ittiest bittiest tiny steps possible through the dining room and down the hall, squeaking his shoes across the laminate floor as loudly as possible. He dragged this out for 15 minutes.

He fed the cats, dropping a trail of sharp, pointy, dried food all over the garage floor, which I promptly stepped on, barefoot.

I listened to the complaints that accompanied each task. I countered with encouraging comments in my most sympathetic voice. (Except when I stepped on the cat food--I unleashed a few expletives then, but he didn't hear me.) And finally, after wearing me down all morning, Mark pushed me over the edge.

"Go brush your teeth," I told him, and he launched into a detailed story of how he'd already done that. The more he objected, the angrier I got.

"Stop arguing!" I finally told him. "I don't want to hear it. Just go brush your dang teeth!"

He stomped off, and I took a deep breath. I can get through this, I told myself.

And then, instead of Mark's electric toothbrush, I heard a completely different sound. A harmonica, to be exact.

I don't know why there was a harmonica in the bathroom, but there was, and it was played loudly by a defiant little boy who was supposed to be brushing his teeth.

The blues jam ended abruptly, as the harmonica was snatched from his hands. This was followed by stomping down the hall--this time, not from the boy, but from the frazzled mother whose patience was gone.

I'm not sure if that child will make it to his 9th birthday after all. He almost didn't make it to Thanksgiving!