The midget in my backseat

I have a backseat driver, and I believe it's my fault.

When you put a two year old and a three year old in a car together, there will be fighting. There will be hair pulling, poking, pinching, and endless cries of, "She's touchingggg meeeee!" I'm a minivan mom (ugh), and it seems that there should be more than enough room to separate the girls in the car. I put their carseats as far apart as possible, but they outsmarted me. They bring ammo, and now they throw things at each other in the car.

I finally realized that distraction was the best method of keeping them from throwing daggers at each other while I drove, so I pointed out stoplights to them. Red means stop, green means go, yellow means go faster. They look forward to stoplights. In fact, they have a song they sing.

"The light is red, the light is red, the liiiiiiight is reddddddd..... thelightisgreenmomGO!"

I made a right turn on a red light yesterday. Perfectly legal, of course. Instantly, there was a scream of protest from the backseat. "MOM! The light is RED! You can't go!" It's okay, Molly, really - Mommy knows how to drive.

"Mooooooommmmyyy you can't drive like dat with kids in da carrrrrr!"

Hmmm. Wonder where she's heard that before.

You have to understand that my husband is one of those drivers that you do not want to be on the road with. He cuts into traffic, speeds, drag races people from stoplights, ignores the red of said stoplights, tailgates, yells at other people and occasionally makes use of his middle finger. When we all go somewhere together, he pulls out his man card and insists on driving. There is rarely a family outing where I don't need to remind him that our precious children are in the backseat. There is a lot of yelling in the car, and random threats of getting out and walking.

When we go places, I try to beat him to the driver's seat. If I'm the last one out, I find a reason that one of us has to go back in the house and do the switchout. What's been working for me lately is not locking the door of the house. In spite of his aggressiveness on the road, he's a gentleman with me, so he always insists on going back and locking it for me. That's when I pull a one-person chinese fire drill and race to the driver's side of the car.

I think he's catching on to my devious ways. Apparently, the kids are catching on to my paranoid ones. It's all good. I'll keep finding ways to revoke his man card, and I'll just turn the radio up to tune out the midget with the ammo in the backseat.