Does this make me a bad person?

There are a load of kids that live around here, however, the closest in G Jr's age and location happens to be a 4 year old that lives next door... And does it make me a bad person if I want to throttle the little twerp every time I have the displeasure of seeing her?

Well, perhaps I should explain a bit more before you make that decission.

She's the second youngest of the insane family that lives next door to me. We have the mid 40's father, his common-law second wife who's the 24 year old best friend of his step daughter, his 14 year old daughter from his first marriage who the neighbourhood kids and parents are calling the lesbian wannabe, the 10 year old jackass boy fromt he first marriage who has no conscious or care of what his actions do to others, the 4 year old lippy bossy twerp from this odd union, and the 2 year old girl from this union as well who's normally found running around the back yard in the nude and has already been brought to the hospital once last year for eating paint when no one was looking. Then there's their yappy dog that I could cheerfuly shoot when it wakes me up in the middle of the night. But that thing's another story, as is the encounters I've had with the rest of them. We'll stick with H, the 4 year old.

If I've learned anything, its that regardless of how well you raise your own children, you face the threat of having all your hard work thwarted by everyone else's kids. While I will never say that G Jr is the most polite and thoughtful child of his age (cause I know he's just a kid and being rude and selfish comes with the territory), he's honestly a good kid. And I'm not saying that cause I'm biased either. Although we still need to remind him on occasion, he does remember to say please and thank you most times. He does share, even though sometimes he needs to be prodded to do so. He doesn't like it when he knows someone's hurting and wants to help. And he is a very loyal friend to those he enjoys being around. For example, a boy that lives 2 doors down (one of our friends' kids), G Jr has loved since they first played together. Sure, the kid's 8 and doesn't always want to play with a 3 year old. But he's good with G Jr, and G Jr thinks the world of him. It's actually quite sweet to see them playing together, cause our friends' kid will do his best to limit what he's doing to involve G Jr, like playing kickball without kicking it over his head, or having bike races and he lets G Jr win :) It's going to be fun to see that kid when he's older... I just have a feeling he'll be good with his own kids when he has them.

Now, G Jr will do what he can to make his friends happy (much to my dislike at times). Being the youngest one running around, not all the kids want to play with him all the time. And that upsets him. At least once a day he comes into the house crying cause the other kids don't want to play with him, and while I don't try to baby him, I do usually get him to either play by himself with some of his toys, or get him to calm down by watching a cartoon. It makes me feel bad because I know that these kids are snubbing the best friend they could ask for (yeah, perhaps I'm slightly biased there), but I also understand how much I didn't want my sister tagging along with me when I was with my friends, so I can see how G Jr would be like that to others.

So that's where H comes in... Being close to G Jr's age, the two of them play often... And I can't very well tell him he can't, even though I really, really want to.

Like I said, G Jr's a pretty good kid. He's got his moments, sure. But what progress has been made in his politeness and acceptable behavious has been thwarted by this twerp. She has the respect for authority (read: her parents) as a criminal has for the police. She's extremely manipulative, bossy and a control freak. For example, her and G Jr will be playing outside, and if G Jr doesn't relinquish control of a toy of his that she wants to play with, then she'll throw a fit or go inside until G Jr's willing to give into her way. She comes over to our house to ask G Jr if he wants to play, and invites herself in, or tries to tell us that her parents said she can come with us if we're going out or join in our dinner if we're eating. Yesterday she tried to invite herself to sleep here. Gunther and I would much prefer not to have her anywhere near G Jr or us, so it's not like we've ever given her the idea that she could tag along on rides or sleep here.

But what gets my goat the most? How G Jr is now emulating her disregard for her parents' wishes. G Jr has been pushing boundaries. For example, he knows how far and where he's allowed to go on his bike. And yesterday I had to go chasing after him (Gunther got called out to do a server move) down the back laneway because H thought it would be a good idea to go biking down to the end and back and stopped on the way to say hi to some guy working in his back yard about 10 houses down. Yeah, so that good and pissed me off, cause he ignored me calling him (the twerp was heard to say "It's your Mom, just ignore her, she's coming this way anyways."), and cause afterwards, I started cramping up from movement and I'm sure stress. But then there was when he came in after that cause I wasn't letting him run amok outside when I can't go chasing after him. Told him that because he couldn't stay where I could see him, then he was staying inside and no, H was not coming in. He could watch TV, play with his puzzles or toys, whatever he wanted to do. So long as he was inside. And what did he do? The same thing I've seen H do a number of times. Open the front door and say over his shoulder that he didn't have to listen!

And that attitude continued all night, even after Gunther got back from his service call. But 90% of it was directed at me (as H's is always directed at her mother's). It took me a few hours to calm down after all that last night, because I mean, how do you correct this issue without removing the problem? And I can't very well do that without breaking the law. If G Jr's outside, it's likely H is outside too. And like I need to have that fight if I tell G Jr he's not allowed to play with her. Either he'll throw a fit, or the crazy neighbours will be a pain in the ass moreso than they've been lately.

So here's what we're doing... Although it wasn't decided last night (we've been throwing this idea back and forth since I got pregnant with GIII and it officially solidified shortly after I was discharged from the hospital after being in there for a week), we're moving back to Sudbury after GIII's born and settled. It may seem a little drastic to move half way across the country to get away from a family of nutcases, but they're only a small part of the reason. The rest of it stems from a number of things, such as the fact that our families have got a lot smaller since we moved out here (recent additions to the list would be now both of my grandparents on my Mom's side, Gunther's Mother, and soon will be his grandpa), the profit we make off this place could afford us a better place in Sudbury and possibly mortgage free, and the free babysitting would be nice. Plus, we've done the math and if things work out, we could live on one decent income (which shouldn't be hard for Gunther to get), and so that would save us a load of money because we wouldn't be spending my paycheck to put the kids in daycare.

Besides, it's more legal than what I'd prefer to do... Unless I can claim Darwin's theory for stomping out an entire gene pool, it's best to leave the nutcases in Alberta and hope they don't travel east.