In which I passive aggressively attack a library volunteer

I take my kids to our local library nearly every Friday morning for story time at 10:30. I started going when Phook was a wee marmot and I wanted to get her used to sitting still and listening to someone else every now and then. So I've gone fairly religiously for a couple years now. At times, my children have pretty much been the only children attending. However, for some reason there is currently a bumper crop of attendees (two home-schooling families with 4 kids each doesn't hurt). So it is a little room in a tiny library packed with many, many kids and moms. It's kinda a sensory overload at this point for me, but I want to keep going even though it makes me a little twitchy to be around that many little people who seem to always have hacking coughs. I remember the library being a fun, exciting place when I was a little kid, and I want that for my kids. (Who knows, one of them may learn to construct profanity-laced run-on sentences just like Mommy!)

So anyhow, we go. If we get there early enough, we look at the weird, white, fully-aquatic frogs they have submerged in a fish tank for a little bit, scream when they move unexpectedly, and then pick out our books. If we don't get there early enough, we start with some coloring. They always have crayons and printed out pictures that loosely match some sort of theme of the stories that day. This is good. Coloring is good. So far, we're good.

Then we move on to the actual story time. This involves each child whipping out a carpet square and jockeying for position on the limited floor space. Then a random selection of moms and older kids attempts get everyone a juice box and a snack, and then Capri Suns start shooting everywhere, and approximately 15 minutes later the story gets started. The stories are fine. The kids enjoy them. Usually it's only about 2 books, which is totally appropriate for the attention spans involved. The littlest mobile children generally ram around the place, and the older children do a decent job of staying in the vicinity of their carpet square. This part is good clean fun.

But then we move onto the art project. The godforsaken art project. This is where it gets ugly.

Okay, what they are attempting to do is provide some form of artsy-craftsy project for the kids that is related to the stories they just enjoyed. So if the stories were about bears, there is some project about bears. Or if they're doing something seasonal, the art project will match.

But here's the thing. 99.9% of the time, the art project is completely age-inappropriate. We are talking about cutting that requires the fine motor skills of a neurosurgeon. With child-safe scissors, which as far as I can tell, are only meant to rip the paper. Those things don't cut. Anything.

Now, I'm not opposed to art projects. Phook has in fact shown a great love for all things art-projecty, and I'm all aboard with fostering that. She likes to color, and she can stay in the lines quite admirably. She likes to cut, and she can cut out simple shapes quite well, as long as they are larger than, say, a nickel. She likes to glue, and she can operate a glue stick. She is, you could say, quite capable of doing art projects that showcase the skills of a child who just turned 4. Bigs likes to color, poorly. Bigs likes to cut, poorly. And Bigs likes to use a glue stick, messily. So he's on board with doing art projects that showcase the skills of a child who is 2.

Unfortunately, the people at the library apparently have a very skewed view of what toddler and preschool-age children are capable of in the art project department. Because the art projects they are coming up with (by which I mean finding via a google search for "art projects") are seriously so far beyond the skill set of their intended projecteers that it is just becoming ridiculous. And it is making me lose my mind.

Okay, so the lady who is doing story time is actually not a library employee, but rather a volunteer with some local literacy group. She takes over the story time from a library staff person in November. So this most recent one was her first in a few months. (However, I'll note that the library staff person who had been doing it rolled exactly the same way.) Anyhow, she is an elderly lady. Very nice. Seems to enjoy children if a bit uncomfortably. Seemed quite overwhelmed by the suddenly explosive turn-out, compared to last year when it was just my two kids and the occasional random stragglers.

So the theme at our most recent story time was dinosaurs. Fair enough. The art project consisted of making this dinosaur wrapped around a toilet paper roll. Each child got a print-out of all the teeny, tiny dinosaur body parts, which they were to color. Then they were to cut out the tiny body parts and affix them to a toilet paper roll, which was the dino's body. When I saw this art project, I truly had to suppress a scream. It seriously would have been time-consuming, tedious, and difficult if I was sitting there in a one-on-one situation patiently helping my oldest child complete it. But not only do I have Phook, but Bigs (who was busy glue-sticking the whole craft table), and the baby (who was crying pretty much uncontrollably unless I swung her in her infant carrier). So I had one arm with which to attempt to assist the two big kids in making the world's most detailed dinosaur on a toilet paper roll.

Here's the thing. I want my kids to be able to enjoy doing an art project. There are several other mothers there who I noticed today just checking out the project and then casually directing the kids into the other room to pick out books or whatever. They skipped it because they knew they couldn't help their 2, 3, or 4 young children complete this thing without everyone going nuts. And I should have too, because it was beyond my parenting (and cutting) skills as well. But Phook likes art projects and sat down and started diligently coloring these tiny, tiny dino arms. Bigs started scribbling on his. When I say tiny, I'm not kidding. The detail on the claws that I was supposed to cut out was the approximate size of a piece of Nerd candy. Tiny. (And funnily, I wrote that "I" was supposed to cut that out. Actually, my 2- and 4-year-old children were supposed to.) There was a zig-zagged piece with approximately 25 zigs and zags, each of which were approximately a quarter-inch in length, that were to be cut out and then glued to the dino's back to be his spikes. The dino's tooth detail was fine enough that I can't actually come up with an object to compare them to in size. It was utterly ridiculous, and also technically impossible, given the child scissors, which as far as I can tell are inadequate for a task as simple as cutting a standard piece of paper in half.

I did not handle this well.

I actually started seething when I saw it. I broke into a sweat, started to breathe hard, and I could feel my pulse in my forehead. This is a rage that has literally been building for years, and those tiny little dino teeth (coupled with the crying baby, I admit) were kind of a breaking point. It's like when your husband does 8,000 disgusting little things involving toast crumbs and dirty socks and empty pop cans around your house and you suck it up and don't mention it and don't mention it but get a little angrier every time he does it, and then one day when you find the filthy dish rag wadded up in a moldy little ball behind the coffee pot, you go absolutely batshit crazy on him for being a pig. And he doesn't get it at all, because he thinks you are really that insanely mad about the dish rag, when really you're insanely mad because this rage has been simmering and simmering FOREVER and this was actually just the one thing that popped the top on that pressurized can of rage. (Or is that just me? Cough, sputter, choke. Anyhow...)

So, yeah, I was not doing well psychologically from the get-go. And I started acting like an asshole. I could not control the escape of my inner asshole. I mean, really I am usually pretty good at faking the funk even when I'm upset about something. In short, I can act okay when I am not. But today that failed me. I started by saying, directly to the volunteer, "Wow, that is a lot of cutting." She cheerily agreed and moved on. I then attempted to direct both my children to start coloring the 9 trillion tiny dino body parts. Phook diligently and happily (and painstakingly slowly) did this. Bigs did a few scribbles and then started getting inappropriate with the glue stick, abandoning the dino parts. I then scribbled the color all over the entire page of dino parts with my left hand for him while swinging the baby with my right hand. Then I started attempting to cut out the dino parts. At which point, I lost my shit, wadded up his dino-part page in a ball, and chucked it in the trash, saying, "We are only doing one of these today." Bigs did not care, as he was happily cutting up some random t-rex picture from the earlier coloring time. He was rather uninterested, it turned out, in a project that required a skill set his mother had not yet developed.

I don't really know who was watching or listening to my tirade. I was standing between the 2 craft tables with my back to the majority of those in attendance, including the volunteer. There was one dad helping his approximately 3-year-old daughter across from me, and he largely ignored me, only once saying, "I don't know. I can't follow these directions. I'm just winging it here." But I was just kind of snarling and trying to help Phook and swinging the baby and trying to prevent Bigs from doing anything out-of-the-ballpark inappropriate.

And then I heard the volunteer behind me say, "This is really, really working on those fine motor skills!"

And then, as I was cutting out the jagged impossible zigs and zags of Phook's dino's spikes, I heard myself say, "Actually, this is just stupid."

I am not sure what my decibel level was, and I didn't turn around to check if anyone (most importantly the elderly volunteer) had heard me. It was somewhere between a mutter and a low growl. It wasn't at the volume of my normal speaking voice, but it is entirely possible that she heard me. At the time I said it, I was in the throes of my own frustration and rage, and I didn't dwell on it. I just hustled Phook through the rest of the project, skimping significantly on the cutting detail, and attempted to keep the other two children from going off the rails.

But it was one of those creeper moments, where 5 minutes after the fact you find yourself reflecting on what just happened and thinking maybe you behaved in a way that was not awesome. And then 10 minutes out you're chastising yourself and nervously wondering who heard you. And an hour later, after the boiling rage of the moment has passed, you're pretty sure you're the spawn of Satan and you in effect just yelled at an elderly volunteer for doing a shitty job of trying to amuse your children out of the goodness of her heart...and then you're suicidal. (Just me having this experience? Again?)

So that is what occurred. I'm still feeling really, really terrible about the whole thing. I have no idea if she heard me, but I really hope she didn't. It was inexcusably crappy of me. If I thought the project was age-inappropriate for my kids, I should have just taken them to check out the weird frogs some more. But man, I just wanted Phook to have the chance to do the art project because she does get amped about them, and I was just so, so frustrated that it was so far beyond reasonable for even my oldest child. And I was also so, so frustrated about 84 other things that are almost all directly related to the stress and sleep-deprivation of having a 7-week-old child who spends what seems like 23 hours per day breastfeeding, along with the bonus compounding factor of having a husband who has been on the bench for the past week due to knee surgery. You know, on top of my regular life, which includes two other very small children, a part-time job, and a household to maintain. And a basset hound with anxiety issues.

Sorry, library volunteer, it's not you. It's me.

It's hard. It really is pretty hard right now. It is doable and I am doing it, but I can't deny that it is hard. And I was a big dickhead today because of it.

I have been thinking about this incident pretty steadily and have been trying to find something positive from it. And what I have come up with is that it is a reminder. It is a reminder to take every opportunity I have to do things that will keep me sane. For me, this primarily takes the forms of exercise and fresh air...unfortunately with it being November in Wisconsin, my opportunities to obtain those things easily and comfortably are waning. But still, those are things I need to find ways to get. Mommy's sanity has got to be up there on the list of priorities for our family, because everything else remaining healthy and good is contingent on my sanity being intact. I need to stop, reflect, breathe, and recognize that this is a very hard marathon-length sprint through the first year of a baby's life. It is okay to let some stuff slide. It is more important to take a minute to just breathe, breathe, breathe. Just breathe. So that is what I'm taking from this. I need to slow it down, dial back my own intensity, and breathe.

And maybe skip story time next week...