Cat Fight

I'm the eldest in my family, so I don't know what it is like to have an older brother or sister. When I was younger I couldn't understand why my parents wanted to take our beautiful family unit of me and them and ruin it by adding my brother. They already had me, I was fun and cute, why bother? We lived side by side for 14 years, me barely tolerating him, and sometimes not tolerating him at all, and then one day, when I was home on break after my first year of college I realized that he wasn't so bad. Quite funny actually. Now my brother is one of my favorite people in the world, and one of the best at making me laugh. Yes, but I'm 28, so I am asking myself, am I going to have to put up with another 20 some years of me telling Giulio, "You have to be nice to your sister!!!"? I try and remind myself how I felt when my brother came along when I was four, but honestly, I liked him in the begining, it was later that I felt my parents had made a terrible mistake. I know we are in early days here, Livia isn't old enough to retaliate or to intentionally tease Giulio, but some days he sure makes it his mission to bother her, i.e. bother me.
It's Saturday. Lorenzo is at work, like most Saturday mornings, but he should be back by two. Saturdays in Italy are in many ways like weekdays, a lot of kids have school, and many people work Saturday morning. Yesterday I made a special effort to get many things done, the shopping, the cleaning, etc so as to be as free as possible for the kids. We start out OK. When I ask Giulio why he is walking around without his pyjama bottoms on he tells me in English that it's because they smell like cheese. He picks them up off the floor and holds them out to me. "Smell them, Mommy." I demure, but looking at his white pj's I realized that it might be a good time to do a load of whites. I'm sorry, but you let it go a few days and suddenly you find yourself to doing three loads in one day because no one has any more clean socks.
All goes well until I have Livia on our bed and Giulio comes in from playing with his trains and gives Livia a "friendly" bop on her head. I hear myself speak to him and suddenly realize that I have become my mother. "You don't have to like her but you may not hurt her!" I say as I kneel down and hold Giulio by the shoulders and look at him. Where have I heard this line before? Oh, wait when I was about 8 sitting in the back seat of the car en route on our summer vacation. Behind me on the bed Livia wails due to the fact that Giulio's bop has knocked her from sitting up to lying down on her tummy, and I haven't yet propped her back up. Giulio looks back at me and giggles in this high pitched way that drives me nuts. "Just walk away," I tell myself, thinking of my mom's advice. "Don't draw attention to his negative behavior." Which is easier said than done when his negative behavior is all over our bed where I am trying to fold laundry. The neatly folded stacks of onesies crumble and fall as Giulio romps around Livia on the bed, like a dog on all fours. Livia picks up a onsies and tries to stuff it into her mouth. "Giulio, you have to get down. I need to fold the laundry." More giggles. "Wanna help Mommy ?" Giulio ignores me and tries to climb back up on the bed, Livia beams at his antics, flaps her arms and call "ehhhhh!" "Giulio, you can't be on the bed right now. Go play with your trains." Another devious laugh, and then a small car flies through the air, not close enough to hurt Livia, but close enough in her general direction to leave not doubt about the intended target. I pull my trump card and stalk into the living room and start throwing the pieces of track and the metal trains into the blue plastic box. "Mommy NO!" Giulio falls to his knees screaming, then collapses on his stomach, lying prone on the floor. He's crying, Livia due to the fact that her favorite person, Giulio, has left the room, starts crying too. The Dixie Chicks, playing at high volume on the stereo manage to drown out some of the noise, so at least the neighbors won't be too alarmed. I drag Giulio to him room and put him on his bed. He immediately leaps up and follows me screaming and crying. "Get back on your bed!' He drops to his knees again, still crying. And I was so close to doing it right this morning. I was going to be that organized super mom that I dream about and have all three of us outside on our way to the park by 9:30 this morning. I had both kids dressed by eight, breakfast cleaned up and laundry going in the washer by 8:30, and yet somehow I wasn't fast enough. All it took was a few minutes and one household chore too many for the whole thing to collapse just like that stack of onesies.
I take immediate action. Livia, I decide, needs a nap. Giulio's trains can go into time out. I pick up the baby and carry her to her room as Giulio follows me while walking on his knees like a religious pilgrim in front of a holy shrine, screaming "Mommy, hug! Mommy hug!" as I move from room to room. My immediate desire is not to hug him but to smack him, so I keep moving. I finally sit on my bed where he throws his head and arms in my lap, a guilty man pleading for forgiveness. Livia, now outraged at being put to bed, is still yelling from the other room. There is unfolded laundry on the bed, I am still in my pyjamas, the jeans that I had been about to put on about an hour ago are stilll on the chair, and both children are inconsolable. Help. I take Giulio, still shuddering with sobs and hold him on my lap. The Dixie Chicks sing on in the next room about how they could have made it easier on themselves, and while I know they are not talking about dealing with preschoolers I feel at that moment that they are singing to me.