“There's where you went wrong, sweetheart.” said my mom.
My mom, dad, brother, LL and I were on our way home from a Tigers game. Lakeland had entertained us for the almost three hour trip to Detroit, was perfect through nine innings, and had finally lost her shit once we were in the car headed home.
I knew she was tired, and I knew that she was going to continue ramping up the level of cranky until she either a) fell asleep or b) I could distract her.
And so...I caved. I did. I gave Lakeland my phone to play with and man OH man, was she happy. Day in and day out, Lakeland begs to play with my phone, only to be rebuffed. But not this time! This time, mommy caved.
I let her play with the phone for a few minutes, and then, gingerly, I took it away. “All done, peanut.” I cooed at her. And she looked at me as if I'd ripped off her ear and started screaming. And screaming. And screaming. She screamed bloody murder for the next 15 minutes. Which is a long time when you are in a car. I tried talking to her in a soft, motherly voice. I sang her favorite Ella Fitzgerald songs to her. I stroked her hair. Not impressed with my efforts, she continued screaming.
Lakeland finally screamed herself into dreamland, and I looked at my mom, seated on the other side of LL's carseat, and shrugged. “I never give her my phone”, I said sheepishly.
“There's where you went wrong, sweetheart.” said my mom.
“I know, I know. I caved. And I never cave!!” I declared. “I seriously haven't caved since, well, the last time I caved.”
Similar situation. We'd been out to dinner with friends, and LL was tired and stuck in the car. Seth and I were traveling back to our friend's house, and somewhat unfamiliar with the area. Which is why I busted out the GPS. And then Lakeland started to cry and I promptly handed over our navigation tool. Duh.
Happy as a clam in the backseat, Lakeland worked on rerouting us to the nearest Gymboree, absolutely delighted with the constantly changing screen, the arrows, and the woman that repeated “recalculating”. How fun for her!
Behind the steering wheel, Seth's face was kind of steely. I figured out waaaayyy too late that it was a horrible idea to give LL the GPS, but I couldn't help smirking at the “beep, beep, beep, 'recalculate', beep, beep, turn left in 200 feet” ,combined with Lakeland's absolute squeals of joy from the backseat.
Here's a kind of breakdown of the conversation between Seth and I:
Seth (with a touch of sarcasm): It might have been wise to not give her the GPS.
Me (outright sarcastically): Well, she's not crying.
Seth: Right. And...we don't know where we're going.
Me (hopeful): You kind of know where you're going, right?
Seth: No, not really. Can you get the GPS back from her please?
Lakeland (reconfiguring our route): Weeeeeeeee!!! Oooooohhhhhhhhhh!!
Me: Nope.
Seth (mumbling what sounded like a transcript from the dad on "A Christmas Story"): AUGH, you blurt rattle trash camel flirt, you blawter prattle sheet gerbil! Omma bomb sack botta saratta, bottom cotta botta, rotta! Billy wam wadger! Drop dom fraud hostical!
Me (because I'm an asshole): Are we there yet?
