Watch The Right Hook

Earlier this week I finally got out with the kids to the beach. Since my brother's daughter was under my watch yet again I wasn't able to take a local bus into Ocean City so I had to ask my brother for a ride which he complained about while we was doing it. Since I have been using his car, his girlfriend has decided another way to be a pain in my rear, besides limiting my use of it, is by insisting they are the safety patrol and insist that Mariam be in a car seat.

Legally she should be in a car seat, she is four and not even fifty pounds. But I don't have one and the one my brother has he left sitting in the open garage since my last visit. (December of 07). Thanks to his lack of housekeeping skills it is not only dusty and dirty but has creepy crawlies all over it. But he decided, after giving me a computer printout on information about car seat recommendations (his snarky girlfriend did that) that he would insist she be in that one for the ride. As he was pounding dirt off the of the seat I told him no way was I sitting that girl in it.

Mariam also protested, she started to cry after he told her she had to be in it. "Tell Uncle Patrick I'm a big girl not a baby". I calmed her down and told her yes she is a big girl but the laws here are different, not that she understood any of that. She settled down in the back and we made our way to the beach with Mr. Grumpy at the wheel.

When we arrived I was getting the stroller ready for Umar and my brother was helping the kids out of the car. Mariam came back to me crying that Uncle Patrick was mean and I asked what happened. "She hit my dad" my niece said. It took me a minute to digest what she said and I looked at Maraim "He is mean I'm not a baby!" she screamed through tears. My brother came around the back of the car and with his usual grumpy way "She hit me! Right in my face and knocked my glasses off!!"

I scolded Mariam for hitting especially a grown up and she has to tell him she was sorry. Inside me I was cheering my little girl for doing exactly what I have wanted to do this entire trip. It has been so bad here and my children are angry at my brother and rightfully so. So fair warning I'm raising girls with good right hooks!