I'm tired

I don’t have any clever or cute way to begin this entry. So I’m gonna go for the salty, honest truth. Parenting is kicking my butt and giving no mercy. You’d think because I rotate weekends with the X-man that I would have time to rejuvenate and replenish my strength and patience. Apparently the only thing the non custodial time does for me is make me miss the peace and quiet even more during my custodial time. I don’t want to sound like I don’t enjoy my kids, because I do. I love their presence in the house. I love knowing they are asleep across the hall from me.  I love them. No doubt or question about it. What I don’t love are the tantrums, the talking back, the non-stop questions, the gauntlet of dinner and bath time, the never ending requests for things out of their reach (that they don’t need in the first place), the theatrical dramas of bedtime, the potty training, the fighting of whose show we are gonna watch first, the fighting about getting dressed in the morning, (can’t wait for uniforms this year), the sibling tango which consists of who can irritate who the most. I’m tired of being their referee more than their mom. I’m tired of cooking dinner and 3 bites later they’re full, then 20 minutes later they’re hungry. I’m tired of saying, “You should have eaten your dinner.” I’m tired of the whining. I’m tired of fighting to get them IN the bath then fighting to get them OUT of the bath. I’m tired of saying “stop.”  I’m tired of sippy cups. I’m tired of spills. I’m tired of crumbs. I’m tired of wondering if this is a phase. I’m tired of being out numbered. I’m tired of being the villain. I’m tired of not enjoying this like I should be. I’m tired of being tired.

I’m digging into my parenting devotionals; I’m trying to apply Love and Logic methods to every situation. I’m praying for my family every day and night. Deep down I miss being able to enjoy the most important job I’ve ever been hired to do. I know God assigned these children to my life because only I can fill the uncomfortable shoes as mom.  So I’m gonna wear the shoes He gave me. I’m gonna walk in them every day. And when I feel it is detrimental to my mental health that I vent, I will publish those rants here.

Please judge me quietly. 

The Cycle

Have you ever had a week where you were positive your entire life, all of your hard work, plans, ideas and future were dissolving right before you at a speed too fast for you to control? And surely you were going to end up alone, broke and probably living in some half way house for rejects? Then a couple days later you get the unpleasant surprise of your monthly cycle and realize all the irrational and psychotic behavior was nothing more than the your body playing ping pong with your hormones? You start retracing your steps and all the arguments you’ve had that week and making a mental list of people you owe an apology to. Boyfriends and husbands are usually first on the list because let’s be honest, they are on the front lines of our foolish and unprovoked shenanigans we create. Next would be the children, your boss, the dog, the cashier at Wal-mart, the lady at the bank, the guy on the highway, your mom, sister or whichever relative you typically deem worthy of receiving your bitchiness, the teacher and quite possibly anyone else who has come in contact with you within the last 72 hours.

So here is my public apology to anyone who has come in direct contact with me this week and had an unpleasant encounter. Here in my life I value your existence and our relationship very much. I strive to provide the best experience possible to you. Please note that during the third week of the month (give or take a few days) I will not be available for rational conversations or enjoyable company. You will probably receive unwarranted blame for anything that bothers me. Anything I say or do should not be taken to heart and will not reflect the true feelings I have towards you. If you are offended during this time of the month, you have been warned and the blame is now on you.

Good news is I’m not insane, I’m just a woman. 

P.S. Until Friday, feel free to BITE ME!

Flugger-Flumps

With the experiences I have accumulated over the past few years I feel confident that I have the expertise to diagnose myself with a Flugger-flump disorder. I created that word specifically for my disorder because its sounds so wrong, that it’s right.

I am more than capable of delegating tasks, organizing things, maintaining a good routine in the home, getting bills paid on time, running errands in between errands and other daily TO DO stuff. But I am completely incapable of delegating my emotions to the appropriate places within myself. I try to find places to sit my anger down but as soon as I lay it down insecurity and fear are being lodged at my head and before I know it I’m juggling all of these emotions with nowhere to sit them down. It’s like I’m an emotional hoarder. This is not a permanent disorder that plaques me daily. It comes and goes and sometimes I can go a month without a breakout of the Flugger-Flumps.  But when it surfaces, the symptoms can include irrational thoughts, racing heart, inability to concentrate, fear of everything, and fighting with people you love. And if the person you are fighting with has never experienced the Flugger-Flumps, it’s difficult for them to give a hoot why you’re acting like an emotional disaster who escaped Insanity Island.

I don’t have a lot else to say other than I am suffering from severe Flugger-Flumps today and I am trying to process them so that they don’t make a permanent scar on my life. Growing hurts; Physically, spiritually and emotionally. As babies grow they experience actual pains in their bodies. As children grow they experience pains when paying the consequences for poor choices. (That doesn’t just apply to children but adults as well.) And as adults, well we experience the growing pains in all of the above mentioned ways. So grab some wine and your bible and work it out I guess.

What? I’m not writing this because I have any answers or remedy…. All I have are Flugger-Flumps. 

The 2012 Parenting Special Olympics

There should be a competition for parenting to see who can do what without permanently damaging their offspring.….. If not an official competition there should at least be some type of medal ceremony bi-weekly to all the mothers who semi-successfully accomplish anything during the week. In the cluster smuck of normal day a child can ask their mother on average 129,652 questions and 129,650 of them are usually demands and unrealistic requests. The rest fall on deaf ears and are usually met with a reply of, “sure whatever as long as you clean up after yourself” which of course the child promises to do and of course the child does not do…

Often times during the week something dip shitty stops me in my tracks and I’m forced to ask myself, “what the heck is happening here” and I can’t retrace my mental steps that lead me to insanity island. For instance, one typical Tuesday night while the kids are playing peacefully in the tub (aka while the kids are splashing around like rabid dolphins and trying to fit all their toys in the tub) I decided I would get all proactive on this Mother Gig and straighten up their sink. GO ME!  I have determined that it is virtually impossible for my children to get toothpaste on their actual toothbrush on their first try. First try usually ends up on the counter, second try on the bathroom rug, and third try is ½ on their brush and the other ½ is plopped in the sink and is almost instantly transformed to multi colored cement. So I start washing the counters, putting headbands in the actual headband box, clearing off clutter and what have ya….. And before I knew it Kylee looks at me and says, “Mom what are you doing?” I look down and was bathing my son’s toy dinosaur in the sink. With soap. And a rag. Under normal mentally stable conditions this dinosaur would have been chunked into the toy box without any regard to its safety let alone sanitary status…. But on this particular Tuesday my wires were disconnected so I bathed two kids….and a dinosaur.

Then of course there is the obstacle course of laundry and dinner. Sometimes I attempt to do both but most of the time only one is done successfully. On this particular Thursday night I was so exhausted from cooking dinner. Pause for interpretation and clarification. The act of cooking dinner isn’t the exhausting part.  It’s the act of cooking with children coming into your kitchen non-stop with snack requests, drink requests, meal requests, band-aid requests, show requests and any other requests that fall under the sun.  Cooking dinner with two young children running lose in a spacious apartment is like doing the hokie pokie at a skating ring. Difficult, pointless and someone always falls down. The ultimate reward of getting thru this insanity course is to watch your kids take about 3 bites of your meal only to say, “I’m not hungry… Can we watch TV and eat later?” Insert blank and defeated stare here….followed by NO. That night, the laundry I started while multi tasking dinner went through a full cycle before I realized I was out of laundry detergent.  Fail.

We are routine family. We have a routine no matter what day of the week it is. Even if the routine itself is to have NO routine, there is still a routine. So Monday night for some reason we were way ahead of our normal schedule… Dinner was ready early, therefore bath times came early and an early bedtime was on the horizon and I just knew I was gonna get to watch some backed up DVR’ed Real Housewives. The night was going well. Then I hear Kylee (5 years) call for me. I get to her room and her legs are squatted as if riding an imaginary horse and she says to me, “I seriously just pooped on myself.” Insert blank bewildered stare here…. After clean up #1 I decided I needed a clean up too. As I am getting out of the shower Kylee is standing there with a soaked shirt. Logan dumped tea on her head. Clean up #2 immediately followed by wine bedtime. I tell Kylee to go get ready for bed which typically consists of pouting, pathetic begging sleep with me, and the sacrifice of her first born in exchange for staying up. Also it includes brushing her hair and teeth and using the bathroom. I go to her bathroom to see what is taking so long and I find her standing on the toilet, one foot on each side. Insert blank and confused stare here. After asking the obvious question, she replies with “Hold on I wanna see if I can make it in.” Clean up #3. Good night.

Sometimes parenting, whether single parenting or dual parenting is so chaotic you’re considered lucky if you get thru it with enough sanity to hold a conversation with the check out girl from Target. So to all the parents out there who are competing in the Special Olympics of parenting just know you aren’t competing alone. There are more of us out here. If we’re hard to spot it’s because we’re curled in a corner somewhere in the fetal position holding on to what’s left of our mental stability. 

A picture is worth 1,000 words