Picking Fights -- Bullet Points

T has been out of daycare for three days due to a bad cold.

He returned today. Trust me, I was ready for him to go back. He spent the entire day yesterday trying to pick fights with me. Mostly he didn't succeed, but he's so singularly focused on it, that yes, sometimes he does get to me. It's like nails on a chalkboard. Eventually you crack.

Today I left home at 4:15 to pick him up. Here are our interactions:

• 4:20 -- arrive at daycare. T unpacks both backpacks and proceeds to attempt to carry all contents home. I tell him to put everything that needs to travel home in one backpack and leave all that can stay at daycare in the "stay at daycare backpack." He fusses and whines. That is a completely unreasonable request as far as he's concerned. I step in and just do it for him. I don't want to spend the next half  hour there arguing with him about how he can accomplish this should-be-easy-for-a-second-grader task. Argument #1
• 4:30 -- Leaving daycare. We go out with the light. T asks why we are going this way. I am prepared to tell him that we discussed this the last time (road construction; tons of traffic) but he answers his own question. Whew. Nearly argument #2. Started out that way, but he turned it around himself.
• 4:31 -- We get the green light and turn onto the main road. T states that the people going the other way (the ones on the main road) never got a red and had just kept going. This makes no sense. Of course they stopped, or we would have been broadsided. I bite my tongue. Argument #2
• 4:31:30 -- We turn into the grocery store parking lot. T starts to cry and whine and fling himself around in his booster seat. "I don't want to go to the store" is the general noise I hear coming from the back seat. Note that when he is with Hubs and they have to make a grocery store run, he never utters a single peep of dismay. Nope, saves it all for me. I bite my tongue. Argument #3
• 4:35 -- Having grabbed the four rolls of toilet paper we will need to avoid having to use leaves to wipe our butts for the next four days, we head for the checkout. T walks through the checkout and over to the magazines. At first I think he's walking out of the store and call him back, but he tells me Daddy lets him look at the magazines. So I let him. I know that store owners hate when kids rifle through the magazines, but I'm picking a battle here.
• 4:36 -- I pay for our toilet paper and walk over to the magazine rack. I look at the Ironman comic he has picked out. He likes reading comic books these days, and it's reading, so I consider -- to myself-- buying it. I find the price. $9.99. No way in heck. I put the comic back in the rack and tell him it's time to go. He wants to buy it. I tell him it's 10 bucks and that's way too much money. He argues with me. "Ten dollars is not a lot of money. Five thousand dollars is a lot of money." I decline to take the bait. He yammers on about it. He can buy it with his own money he informs me. I finally tell him, "Ten dollars is more than I spend on a book. We're not spending 10 dollars on a comic. End of discussion." Argument #4
• 4:39 -- We are pulling out of the store parking lot. Trying to change the subject, I ask him how his lunch was today. Silence. "I asked you a question," I prompt. "I said GOOD," he shouts back. "No actually, you didn't say anything," I say. "Yes I did," he argues. "Not out loud," I say. He has no response, validating my observation that his answer had been totally in his inside his head voice. Argument #5
• 4:40 -- "Pizza for lunch tomorrow," I announce, remembering the summer daycare schedule. They buy pizza on Fridays for the kids who want it. "I'll have to send in three dollars." "THREE DOLLARS?" he accuses. "It's only TWO dollars." "Nope, this year they told us it's three dollars," I respond. "WHY!" he demands. "I don't know," I said. "The pizza probably went up in price. Pizza is getting expensive these days," I say, thinking of all the times we've spent $30 and more on a couple of pizzas. "HOW?" he demands. "You used to be able to get a pizza for like five bucks," I explain, about to go on to tell him now we easily spend 10 dollars or more per pizza, but he cuts me off. "That's more than three dollars!" he exclaims triumphantly, thinking he has caught me being wrong about something. I process it. Oh, I've said that I have to send in three dollars for his pizza. He thinks one pizza is going to cost three dollars, which is cheaper than the five dollars I just said we used to pay. I attempt to explain that he will be eating only a part of the pizza -- so the three dollars doesn't pay for a whole pizza, just part of it. "But we get to eat more than one piece," he argues, again confident that he has outsmarted me. "We're not going to discuss this any more," I respond, realizing I should have stopped engaging in the conversation back at the "It's only TWO dollars" comment. "Except for me to say that I don't appreciate your argumentative tone. And since you decided to pick a fight with me, now you don't get pizza tomorrow." "I didn't pick a fight with you; I was just telling you." "You were telling me with a nasty tone. And that is your choice to start arguments with me, but let me assure you, you are not going to win the arguments. Because you decided to argue with me, now you don't get pizza tomorrow." Arguments #6, #7, and #8 (arguing about the price and then arguing about why the price is higher this year than last and then arguing about the fact that he argued)
• 4:45 we pull up to our house. He stomps inside. 

In less than 30 minutes, he picked eight fights. It just wears me out. I have to stop getting sucked in to trying to explain things. Which means our conversations will be extremely short. Because how can you converse with a kid when you can't answer any questions knowing that it's just going to lead you down an "Ah ha, I got you!" path? 

Sometimes I just want to run away from home. Days like today, I don't feel like we've made much progress in the past three and a half years. 

This is my reality. This is how life is for me day in and day out. Eight arguments in half an hour is probably a typical frequency. If we are together all day long, multiply that by the number of hours he is awake. There are times I think we are making progress in the brain drain department, but then we backslide in a big way. 

I think it's good that we don't have the money to go to Six Flags this weekend. Because someone needs some mommy time. Speaking of which, it's time to put on my Mommy Superhero outfit and do some mommy-ing. Let's see how this goes.