Provided

Don’t get me wrong, I love my children but like all kids they can be quite challenging. Aubrey is 5, a red-head, and apparently my IQ decreases with every day of kindergarten she attends. Aubrey is the most stubborn child I have ever met and regardless of the negative consequences awaiting her bad behavior, if she makes up her mind to disobey there is no stopping her.

Emma is 3 and while she is the sweetest talking child on the planet, she can destroy more stuff in 30 minutes than I have personally destroyed in over 30 years. Or as my Momma would say, “Emma could break a nail.” Emma is mischievous and curious. The child has fine motor skills that would make a brain surgeon weep. I once found her in the garage, with a screwdriver in her hand dissembling a birdhouse that had taken my husband an entire Sunday afternoon to build.

So I was hopeful when I found out I was pregnant for the third time- hopeful that God would have mercy on my soul and give me a child that would be sweet, mild mannered and maybe even a little shy. And for the first nine months after Sadie was born, I was pretty sure He had answered my prayers.

Sadie was the perfect baby. She slept well, ate well and was agreeable to any and all social situations. Her older sisters were surprisingly gentle and patient with her and with all the attention she took away from them. Then all of a sudden, Sadie was crawling and she was everywhere. There is no surface in our home that is safe from this child. I began spending 85 percent of everyday vacuuming, sweeping and making the girls pick up all of their little bitty toys out of the floor to keep them from ending up in Sadie’s mouth. The other 15 percent of my time was spent closing the bathroom doors to keep her from playing in the toilet.

Aubrey and Emma are the best of friends and the worst of enemies, but because Sadie is a bit younger, I was once again hopeful that there would be peace between her and her siblings.

On a recent shopping trip to buy myself a new pair of running shoes (with Sadie and Emma in tow) all my hopes and dreams of a mild-mannered, docile child were shattered. I picked out my shoes in less than five minutes. I had looked online before actually going to the store because I had enough sense to realize my 3-year-old and my 10-month-old probably weren’t going to sit idly by while I leisurely tried on shoes.

After picking the pair I wanted I made a mad dash through the store, reminiscent of Supermarket Sweep. The store was having a “Buy One Get One Half Off” special and I wanted to look at all the shoes that would fit a member of my family to make sure I wasn’t missing out on a good deal. I all but ran up and down the aisles of the store, pushing a stroller and shoving snacks in Emma’s face while she walked along behind me barefoot. (I know, I know- barefoot in a shoe store. Oh, the irony.)

I stopped in the girl’s section to look for a pair of tennis shoes for Aubrey and while I was looking, Emma began playing peek-a-boo with Sadie. Sadie cackled loud enough for everyone in the store to hear her and Emma, quite pleased with herself, kept playing.

Since both of my children were distracted I peeked around the next aisle and decided to do a quick “drive-by” to see if there was anything I might need. I left the stroller parked where it was and ran down the aisle glancing hurriedly at all of the shoes. I realized very quickly there was nothing I was interested in and rounded the corner of the aisle just in time to see Sadie grab her bottle by the nipple and swing it as hard as she could at Emma’s face.

“WHACK!”

I looked at Sadie quite confused. Surely she didn’t do that on purpose, I mean, she was only 10 months old. Sadie grinned at me with her gummy, toothless grin and spun her bottle around like a gun-slinger in the Wild West. I almost expected her to blow the smoke off the nipple and say, “There’s a new sheriff in town,” before she slid it back into her mouth. But she just looked at me with her wide blue eyes and laughed.

(Robin O’Bryant is a Mount Pleasant resident and mother of three. Read her blog online at www.robinschicks.com or e-mail her, zebandrobin@hotmail.com)