Okay. I've had company since Saturday morning early. Friday night I slept on the couch so as to leave all of the beds with clean linen, and I didn't sleep well. I was very excited...

One of the folks coming in was a friend that my friends had invited. She was "so excited about the trip" that she didn't want to miss it--despite the fact that she was whooping like Typhoid Mary. (Yep, we all have it now, including my friend and her husband and son, me, and my children!)

But, she also snored worse than anyone I've ever heard. Oh, and I also snore, but this gal could raise the roof on the building.

Okay, picture this: I give my master suite to my friend, her husband and her 8 year old son. I give my guest bedroom to their friend. (It shares a bathroom with my babies' room.) I sleep on the couch downstairs -- but, I really don't sleep. The snoring is incredible despite closed bedroom doors and my being on the floor below, but then I'm on the couch immediately beneath Sleeping Beauty.

So, when she goes into an extreme coughing fit at about 5:00 a.m. in the morning, does she come downstairs? Of course not. She gets up and uses the bathroom between the two bedrooms and hacks up a lung in there, thereby awakening both of my children. Then she goes in a talks to them and coughs on them. I scurry upstairs so that my kids won't wake everyone else up, and I take them downstairs. Then, she goes back to bed...

Come nap time??? She's gotten up (finally) and decided that it is time to bathe...which she does while I'm trying to put the babies down. When she finishes her bath, since they are still baby-babbling, she stops by to say "howdy."

Sunday morning and afternoon my children misbehave throughout church services. They are exhausted, which does not mean that they will be sleeping, thank you. Afterwards my friend tells me that I need to get a little stick and "train" them to behave in church. Thanks. I think to myself, "'Wonder if a little stick would work on company??"

To misquote the old "Love Story," "ompany means never having to respect a schedule..." So, we do interesting things like interfering with the babies going to bed on time; scheduling trips to the zoo leaving for San Diego at 1:30 p.m. and closing down the zoo at 5:00 p.m. -- in San Diego.

It's 5:10 p.m. While I'm trying to buy the zoo pix of my babies, the friend offers to watch my babies for me. What was I thinking??? I thanked her and went about my business... Shoot me for stupid. The next thing I'm hearing is her sweet, come hither to Caeleigh while she's trying to













find Caidan.











Wait a minute...did we just say FIND????? We're at the exit to the zoo in downtown San Diego, just 5 minutes from an international border and we DO NOT KNOW WHERE MY 23 MONTH OLD SON IS?????????

When I heard her use the word "find," I dropped the photos and bolted. She wasn't even calling his name, just ambling along. And there I am streaking ahead, screaming, "CAIDAN, CAIDAN, CAIDAN!!!" She says, "I think he's in the store..." You WHAT??? WE WEREN'T IN THE STORE... THE STORE WAS HALF A BLOCK AWAY FROM WHERE WE WERE... JUST WHEN WAS SHE GOING TO BECOME CONCERNED WITH LOCATING HIM??

I go into the store screaming for my son, and am ready to scream out, "EVERYBODY STOP WHERE YOU ARE -- we're looking for a small baby boy," when she says, "Oh, I see him." He was at the far back of the store. Of course, he could have been off the zoo premises and across the border by then, too. I was so upset that I couldn't even handle it. I went flying to where he was and there this dufuss is trying to get Caeleigh to hold her hand. I just handed her their jackets and said, "Here. Hold these -- they won't be able to get away from you." Then I grabbed a hand of each child's and headed for the exit.

I didn't know whether to hug my children up close or scream at them or beat them or simply sit down and sob my heart out. In the end, I opted to have the two of them hold hands and touch the car as I unlocked for us -- only to have Sleeping Beauty try to interfere with that by trying to get Caeleigh to hold her hand again. I kind of snapped at her: "Please. They know that they are supposed to hold each others' hands and touch the car. If you dismantle that I will wind up having to chase one or both of them." Then I put Caeleigh into the car, and picked Caidan up and sat him on the trunk of the car and told him that he was NEVER to leave Mommy and Caeleigh when we were out together. I got him into his car seat and apologized to my "guest" for having snapped at her. Her response???

"Well, I really love them and I was really scared for them."

I felt like saying horrid things. She didn't even seem aware of the significance of us sitting there on an international border. She opted to ride with my friends instead of riding with me and I climbed into my car. And then my knees went totally weak and I began sobbing and sobbing. I couldn't get stopped for a bit. It was so stupid of me to believe that someone else was going to watch my babies.

So, did things end there?

Of course not.

My best friend of all time, the one who thinks I should train my children about Jesus' love by applying a stick to their fannies, comments about what a "handful" my children are... H'mmmmm...

She and her husband want to have dinner with me before heading towards Palm Springs. Of course, it's nearing 6:30 now, and dark, and clearly the "witching hour" for my kids. I've never treated my children this way before. But I find Seaport Village and the Harbor House (finally) and by now it's 7:30 p.m. Caidan is asleep and Caeleigh is whining and I suggest that they eat dinner there and that I return home.

They want to dine with me. So, we make reservations at Black Angus in Rancho Cucamonga for 8:45 p.m. and drive back up. I awaken my babies and haul them in for "dinner." I fed them at the zoo knowing that they needed to have their dinner at the regular time. Now they are exhausted, fussy, coughing badly, and have been incarcerated in car seats for 4.5 out of the past 6.5 hours. We take them into the restaurant.

When Caidan begins fussing, we have an 8 year old who thinks he should be sarcastic and mimic him, something everyone else thinks is funny. Finally I turn on him and say, "You know, I can't make him stop doing that because he's a baby. But it would really help if I did not have to hear it in duplicate -- could you please stop?" Caeleigh was tired and frustrated and wanted only to snuggle up in my arms -- meanwhile, I had agreed to share a dinner with S.B. and my friend and they proceeded to eat most of it without my help. When we got ready to leave, my friend took it upon herself to corral Caidan (as though he is some sort of offender) and grabbed him by the hand/wrist. We were all walking along together, so he didn't mind that, but when it was time to step out into the parking lot, he balked at the curb, which I have taught him to do. We all hold hands together before going into the parking lot.

When he balked, my friend grabbed onto his wrist hard and he began screaming and twisting to try to get his hand away. She got steely eyed and informed me that he was "trying to twist away from her." The implication was that he was bad and she was in the right and it was late and I was tired and I didn't want to put our friendship on the line, but if anyone else had done this to my child I would have put them on their fanny. I was furious and so afraid that it was going to show.

I kept my cool and stayed quiet, but said, "He doesn't understand." She said, "Oh, he understands and I'm not going to let him go." I reached down for him and said, "No, he doesn't understand because we have a routine that we rely upon and he knows that he is not supposed to be stepping down off of the curb without Mommy." I scooped him up with me and set him back down next to Caeleigh, and all of the little hands flew into place and we walked out to my car. But I was seething.

People who do not have multiples can be so terribly smug about how things should work. They don't bother to analyze what is occurring when things are going right, and when the kids become tired and exhausted and things fall apart, they don't look at what is going wrong. I have very well behaved children, and they are sweet and good. I very rarely use any kind of physical discipline on my children, and I always explain to them what we are going to do. The only times when I might engage in physical discipline is when I know that they have understood me and are being deliberately rebellious. I saw nothing like that out of my children and I saw no efforts to communicate with them.

I'm sorry about how long this is, but am I missing something here? It's 24 hours later and I'm still furious. What have I missed?

You know what? If you think I have spoiled brats and that I'm in the wrong here, please give me a Christmas gift and keep it to yourself. I'm offended and hurt that people would treat my children poorly and expect me to condone it. If you understand and/or have been there, I'd love to hear how you handled it...

Fondly,
Cat w/3 Kittens
Caidan, Carina and Caeleigh
born at 31 weeks, 1/8/04.

It is better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all. In memory of Carina, who was greatly loved.

http://lilypie.com>[

Dear Cat,
I am so sorry that this has happened to you and right before Christmas too...

I think it is just so very hard when friends let us down..especially very close "best friends of all time". We trust that close friends will support us in our mothering and in the ways that we live our lives. We trust that they will guard and protect our children. We trust that they will honor and respect the way we nurture and guide our little ones. It is such a loss when this trust is broken. It is very difficult for it to heal when it involves our children-the most precious miracles that we will ever have.

Your dear friend violated your trust in so many ways....by bringing along an uninvited and inappropriate guest who was also ill, by criticizing you, by criticizing your children, by setting you and your babies up to fail with unreasonable demands, by allowing her own child to further disrupt the situation, by pushing herself between you and Caidan, by not being supportive or helpful, by not understanding or remembering what life is like with small toddlers.

You rose to the occasion by opening your heart and your home. You were a generous and tolerant hostess despite the ongoing stress of a situation out of your control. You even quelled the ferocious mother bear instinct in respect of the past friendship you had with this friend.

It is understandable that you now feel angry, because friends should never expect you to put their needs in front of your children's needs. Friends should understand that small children must come first. If your friend had been sensitive to your children, or had any understanding of the special little people that they are, she would not have asked all of this from you. The fact that she was blind to your children and their needs puts you in a most uncomfortable position of having to choose between a "best friend of all time" and your very precious blessed babies. This is unfair and unreasonable, because you are a most ferocious mother bear and your children will always come first for you.

Sometimes the only thing possible that can come out of a bad situation is to find the lesson to be learned from it. We never know how a lesson learned today may protect us from an unforeseen disaster lurking in the future. I often try to figure out what I am supposed to be learning from the difficult events that are so consuming me. In this way, I can sometimes find peace and put it to rest.

I have had many lessons this fall with people I love and trust letting me down in critical ways. The very worst of these lessons involved my dearest, most trusted friend who is also the babies' godmother. She knows what I went through to have my children. She is a L & D nurse and took care of me while I was hospitalized for both of my pregnancies. She was present for the births of all my children. She is one of the very few people who has ever cared for my babies when I was not present. I trusted her implicitly and completely to guard my children with her life. This trust was horribly violated and I am having the hardest time finding a way to forgive her.

I needed to take my older DS to his music class and she insisted on having me leave the babies at her house. I was going to leave only one baby, but she said that her 13yo daughter and her daughter's friend would be there. This way there would be a baby for each of them and it would be fun. I had never left the babies anywhere before, but I trusted my friend and I know her daughter well. Besides, I was only going to be gone for 45 minutes. I left the babies with the three of them and took my DS to his class. Less than 45 minutes later I was 2 blocks away from her house turning on to her road. I was shocked to see my friend in her car with another person. She was turning onto the road I had just come from. She yelled out the window that she was going to Sears to get a car battery. I was confused and upset and didn't understand what had happened. I drove to her house and went in to find my babies. They were upstairs in the 13yo's room. The room was a complete wreck with all kinds of small objects laying around. It was completely non-childproofed. The babies were in every direction and two of them had poop. There were no other adults in the house. These girls had never babysat any child alone before. Neither of them had younger siblings. I would never in a million years leave even one baby alone with them, much less all three in an unsafe environment. I was upset and angry! Why did my friend do this? I was only gone for 40 minutes! She decided to go to Sears and get a battery for her son's car. She put the lives of my children at risk without even a second thought. She could have waited 5 minutes; she could have called me on the cell phone; she could have sent her friend to the store; she could have left her friend to supervise; she could have made any other choice but the one she made. Now I am left with my ferocious, protective mother bear instinct and a broken friendship. I am searching to find a way to forgive my friend, but she has put me in an impossible position. What can I possibly learn from this horrible lesson??

My heart breaks for you to have experienced something as painful and stressful as the situation I am in. A true friend should not have done this to you. I pray for you to find peace amidst the chaos. I know you will find joy whenever you look into the trusting eyes of your sweet babies. You are a wonderful mother! Take care...

Cynthia
DS-7/99
BBB born 8/04 at 31 4/7 weeks