The Angel Enigma

Andrew...OH, my stinky little Andrew. He had a rough day today. Granted it is understandable. After we got up and ate breakfast we ventured out to Aberdeen city center to find a bookstore that sells Mike's textbooks. We didn't think it would be too difficult. SNORT! We were wrong. Driving here is DIFFERENT! Woo-da-lally, it is different! Forget the whole driving on the the 'other' side stuff...the real problems come from the impossibly small roads and the incredible difficulty of navigating. I was spoiled with the Utah grid system, that is certain. We live in a little village called Peterculter (pronounced, 'cooter' here)and we knew that it would take about a half hour or so to get into the city center near kings college Aberdeen which was our destination. Well, after driving about 2 hours we finally found the bookstore by making three wrong turns down a cobbly alley. We were lucky...YES! Although I will say that a fantastic member in the ward, Brother Goldie, was kind enough to let us borrow his Navman (gps) for the week to help us get used to where we need to go. The Navman saved our life! In fact, if we hadn't had it we would probably still be trodging around Aberdeen. Anyway, as you can imagine we had a fully rested and awake toddler strapped in the back who DID NOT appreciate being cooped up for so long. So on some level I could understand why he screamed for half the time...although, I'm still twitching a little.

Well, after we went to the bookstore (and consequently found out that they DID NOT carry Mikes books)we decided to take a little trip to the nearby ASDA (UK version of Walmart) to stalk up on food and a few other things we needed. Well, Andrew DID NOT appreciate this either. I thought he might enjoy it, he usually likes going to the store with me. However, in his view the whole shopping trip was a crule taunt. We would not let him play on the moving walkways (seriously, like the ones at the airport, except you can put your cart on them...so cool). We would not let him throw the hello kitty phone accessories into the display basket and we would not let him squeeze the tellytubby toy for the 205th time because it was time to go. Needless to say he screamed nearly the whole time.

When we finally made it home, he was still screeming and saying things like, "No, no Mommy!" or "STOP...Noooooooo!" the funny thing was I wasn't doing anything...nada! So after feeding him a jam sandwhich and letting him watch a little kids show he calmed down and I finally got him to sleep. Ahhh... Mike and I were laughing when it was all over. We were laughing because it was quite a stressful morning and Andrew was the cherry on top, we were laughing because we were both so frazzled it smelled like charred hair and we were laughing because, well...what else are you going to do. (I have left out a bunch of other stressful things that happened, but really, it was quite crazy today) Anyway, during our laugh time Mike said it was funny because most people think of thier kids as little angels and today we agreed...today Andrew proved to be our little angel of DARKNESS!

Well, typically if Andrew has a rough morning it will stay that way throughout the day and I fully expected it to continue once he woke up. I was right. Mommy could do no right this afternoon and we were pretty much neck deep in a battle of 'figure-out-how-to-keep-Andrew's-pitch-out-of-shrill-opera-singer-tones'. Anyways, so this was the pace of the afternoon and then suddenly, non-expectantly, Andrew became happy. He was sweet, he was cuddly, he would play, he would laugh, he would eat. In fact I just finished putting him to bed and he was SOOO cute. We read a book and said a prayer (he copied everything I said and is getting so good at his words!). He gave me a kiss and a hug and even said, "I ub ew" unprompted. WHAT THE...

I suddenly found myself NOT wanting to put him to bed. I wanted to hold him and snuggle with him and play with him and read to him. I wanted to kiss those chubby cheeks and hold those chubby hands and do whatever that little angel wanted! HUH?! What, wait?!? Did I just catch myself calling Andrew and ANGEL...like the kind with white wings and a halo?

Oh....isn't parenting an enigma?!?