Last weekend we had a camping trip. Our family went with another family that have a daughter about the age of our oldest son and it was beautiful. Fishing, drinking, some hiking and of course roasting marshmallows. I even tried to teach my 4 1/2 year old to play chess and he was grasping the concept pretty well. The trip started off pretty rough though.
As I mentioned my Uncle passed recently and taking care of the family has consumed much of the time I would have used to prep for our trip. I ended up starting to work on everything the night before the trip. We were to meet our friends at the camp sight at 1pm so it was crunch time in my mind. The day of we had some stuff we needed from the hardware store and I needed to pick up some food for the trip.
I was up early packing and prepping. I know there’s a lot to do and I don’t really like to be late. My fiancé is still in bed at 8am, 9am by 10am I’m fucking pissed and have to wake him. We’d been up late the night before him smoking or something me getting shit ready but still 10am when we have shit to buy and get to the camp sight by 1pm!
When he wakes up I start rattling off what needs to get done and try to start planning with him who is going to do what with which kid. He starts to push back saying no rush we don’t have to be there right at one and it’s not untill much later. I push back to him we have a lot to do time will fly. He doesn’t care we start to fight in a bad way. I made shish kabobs and couscous salad as well packing a million things.
Well, to cut to the chase we get there about 3pm. We start to unpack and there’s a snaffoo and he has to take our mutts back to the house. My oldest son wants to play with his little girlfriend with walkie talkies but she wants to play house with my youngest son. My oldest gets a HORRIBLE attitude. He is scowling and stomping and says he hates her and doesn’t want to be arround her. I try to talk to him and he tells me not to talk to him and that he doesn’t care about anything. He is sounding a lot like my fiancé. I have to put him on time out. I let him sit for his time and then come back to talk to him. He still can’t shake the anger and I try to talk him down. Ask him questions about how he’s feeling and why he’s acting out so bad. He says he doesn’t know. He won’t relax. It makes me cry. He’s seeing bad things and it’s creating bad things in him. I try to be as loving as possible and let him know he can talk to me about anything. I try to dry my eyes and put myself back together so my friends won’t ask why my kids bad attitude makes me cry.
Things got better. My fiancé wanted to be close to me he wants things to be good but he doesn’t see that he’s pushing me away constantly. My son self corrected and for the rest of the trip he was pretty darn, good they both were. We had a lot of fun. He says Mama can we go camping all of Spring for 96 days. I told him we’d have to do it more and I want to back that up.