This morning has shaped up to be one of those mornings that, in all honesty, makes me feel like an inadequate mother. And I don’t mean that in a funny “Ha-ha, I serve my child chicken nuggets for every meal” kind of way, I mean it in the “I have completely lost my patience and am at the edge of all reason and sanity” kind of way.
It’s a little hard for me to admit, because I know there are many of you that read this blog that have multitudes of children. I realize I only have one, and I know from experience there are plenty of people who love nothing more than to say, “If you think it’s hard with one, you ought to try having three or four or eight…”.
So let me say, I applaud mamas of more than one, good for you. However, part of the reason I only have one is because some days I feel like it’s all I can handle and even as I type this, that realization makes me cry. I would love to be the kind of mama that can host story time for seven kids, let them finger paint all over the walls, and never get tired of the endless stream of questions and demands, but that’s not me. Sometimes, as much as I adore my little girl and wouldn’t trade motherhood for anything in the world, I need order and quiet.
I need silence.
This morning I got the paints out in an attempt to keep Caroline entertained while I tried to get some work done. And let me just say that if Lee Iacocca had attempted to work from home while raising a three year old, Chrysler would have gone belly up in the first six months.
I looked over in time to see her covering herself with paint. She had paint all up and down her arms, on the bottoms of her feet, on her legs, it was beyond anything a damp paper towel could handle. So, I stop what I’m doing, go run the bath and drop her in.
Nothing thrills her more than a morning bath, so I thought I could sit in the bathroom with my computer and get some things done. It was a perfect plan until she started splashing huge amounts of water throughout the bathroom despite my warnings that I was going to yank her out of the tub if she kept it up. When I did, in fact, yank her out of the bathtub, I had to listen to all the whining and crying about how I am not nice and I’m not her friend and she just wanted to splash.
And it’s moments like these where the childish side of me wants to say, “Well, if I’m not very nice, then why did I drive you over to Gulley’s house right at bedtime last night for the sole purpose of retrieving Cee the Unicorn because you wanted to sleep with him?”
But I don’t say that because I’m the mama.
The rest of our morning consisted of a series of whining about being hungry and then not eating what I offered, stomping Chex Mix into the carpet to the point that the pretzel residue has become a permanent part of the rug fibers, crying and throwing a fit that her Cinderella inflatable bed was deflated, and endless whining about everything else she could possibly think of, including the air she breathes.
It’s at this point that I just put my head down and start to cry. I am tired. She has spent the last three nights in our bed because of thunderstorms and I realize that’s part of the motherhood deal. I don’t expect her to lie in her room afraid of thunder with no one to comfort her, but the problem is I start to feel like I haven’t had a break. I need a few moments of no one touching me, no one talking to me, and most importantly, no one crying about something…like I’m one to talk.
I realize this isn’t the kind of post y’all are used to reading over here, but I am tired and frustrated. The worst part is, feeling this way makes me feel guilty, which then just makes me feel worse about my mothering skills.
Most days I try to remind myself that all of this is fleeting and I need to soak in every moment. One day she’ll be older and I’ll long for the days that she wanted my total and complete attention all the time. One day, I’ll be nostalgic for the days that my life was taken over by a three foot tall tyrant.
But today is not that day.
Let’s hope tomorrow it all looks a little better.