Unfair!

Poor Spencer.  His life is so unfair lately.  How do I know?  Because he reminds me of this on a daily basis.  Thirty to forty times a day.

Seriously, every other exclamation out of his mouth is "Unfair!" or "That's not fair!" or some other variation on that theme.

Being the good mother that I am, I have sat him down and tried to explain to him how most of the things he's complaining about are quite fair.  Being the mean mother that I am, I have also told him, on several occasions, that's he right: life's not fair, it's never gonna be fair, and he might as well get used to it.

He hated both of those lines of logic.

The thing is, Spencer complains about the unfairness of a lot of things that don't really have anything to do with fairness.  Like him having to do homework.  Or clear his plate after a meal.  Or go to bed. 

This evening he and his brothers were in the big tub in my bathroom (a rare treat!), creating tsunamis and having a grand time.  But soon I heard squawking and fighting and Josh, dripping and naked as a little boy can be, came running up to me, complaining that Spencer wasn't sharing any of the cups.  There were seven cups in the tub and Spencer wouldn't share a single one.  I told Spencer he had to share at least two cups with Josh and two cups with Cole.

"No", Spencer said.

"Alright, then I guess you're ready to get out of the tub.  Right. Now," I replied.

"UNFAIR!" Spencer shouted, as he gave up the precious cups.

I admit, it's a bit hard to have patience with a child going through this phase.  Especially when there are so many things that are going on around him that are most certainly not fair.

Such as Cole coming down with an ear infection today, despite having tubes.  It's not an especially bad ear infection because we caught it early, but he has goop coming out of his eyes, which is weird and gross.  And I now have to fight him several times a day for the next week when I put in his ear and eye drops.  That seems pretty unfair.

And take poor Josh.  He waits all day for his big brother to come home to play, only be ignored and pushed aside as his big brother's friend comes over and hogs all the attention.  That doesn't seem very fair.

Or my sciatica.  I could barely walk today, not that any of my children even noticed or cared.  With sciatica there's a fine line between being on your feet too much or sitting down too much.  I crossed that line on both accounts today and paid dearly for it.  In fact, I am sitting on a heating pad as I type this, yelling at you from my room to get back into bed because I can hear you sneaking around but it just hurts too darn much to get up and physically escort you back to prison bed.  And the only reason I have this sciatica is so that I can bring another tiny human into the world who will one day accuse me of treating her unfairly.

Talk about unfair.

And so, Spencer, I can only say this: You're right.  Sometimes life really isn't fair.  It even sucks sometimes.  But I find consolation in the knowledge that someday a child of yours will go through this very same phase and test your patience to its limits.

At which point life will seem just a wee bit fairer in the eyes of a certain mother of yours.