Not My Finest Day

Today was just one of those days.  You know the kind.  The kind where  you spend a lot of the day wishing you could rewind that moment and that one.  The kind of day when you wish you could hit the button on your alarm clock and just start from the beginning with one declaration: “Do-over!!”.  The kind of day when you realize that little “care-for-an-egg-for-the-weekend-project” in junior high did nothing to prepare you for all that real parenthood entails. 

I hate days like this.  Days when the voices in my head tell me, you are completely screwing your kids up and you best be putting deposits into their future therapy fund daily.  I can see it now. . . Chanelle is sitting on a couch across from a therapist who is wearing dark-rimmed glasses and has a pen tucked behind her ear and a pen in her hand as she nods and takes notes on Chanelle’s traumatic child-rearing. . . I don’t know what happened, she’ll tell her therapist.  One moment we were sitting at the table making bracelets and the next she went completely ballistic. 

It went something like that.

Chanelle took her bracelet-making kit out this afternoon and asked if I would help her.  I looked at the clock and saw we had about an hour before dinner and told her we should have enough time.  We loaded our materials onto the kitchen table and while Chanelle selected her bracelet colors, I refreshed myself on the “how-to’s” of the kit.  To my left Meadow sat and observed.

Oh, and she screamed.  I’m not talking tiny baby screams. . . I’m talking blood-curdling-high-pitched-ear-piercing-I-want-your-attention-and-I-want-it-now kind of screams. 

I did my best to ignore her.  I attempted to tell her no.  I handed her a toy.  I offered her a cheese stick.  I tried again to ignore her.  She would not be ignored.  Her eyes glistened with big crocodile tears, her nose dripped like a faucet, and her mouth oozed with spit. . . until I picked her up.

Like a magic button was pressed–she turned it off.  Silence flooded the room. 

I breathed deep and soaked in the peace. 

I reached for the bracelet again and attempted the feat one-handed.  It wasn’t going to happen.  So, I did the unthinkable. . . I put Meadow down. 

Someone pressed that magic button again and without a moments hesitation those blood-curdling-ear-piercing screams filled the house again.  That’s when it happened.  I reached the end of my rope. 

I shoved the bracelet maker away, told Chanelle to forget it we aren’t going to do it, slammed my chair under the table, picked Meadow up off her chair and set her down, slammed my phone onto the counter, tugged at my hair from the roots, slammed a few cupboards shut, opened the refrigerator just so I could slam it shut, and picked up my phone just so I could hear it crash back down to the counter-top again. 

Suddenly, the room was silent again and somehow the girls had found their way to another part of the house.  We’ll just refer to this as: Not My Finest Moment

In my defense, this was our entire day.  My littlest seemed to want to test the full range of her vocal chords and after ten hours of those screams–I’d had enough.  (I know, I know, no excuse.)

It was about that time that the email with the subject line, Five Mistakes Many Mom’s Make, dinged into my phone.  When I saw the article was about discipline mistakes, I immediately deleted–obviously, I’ve got this area under control.  Okay, really, I didn’t need anymore guilt at that moment.

In all reality, I wanted to throw the Loopdedoo across the room and see it shatter to pieces. I thought that might calm my mood.  Or at the very least, I was sure it would feel good.  Tonight, I’m celebrating the fact that I didn’t do that.  (Small victories, right?) Instead, I calmed myself down and when the girls braved my presence again, I offered my apologies and explained that we will make the bracelets on another day.  Chanelle responded cheerfully, Okay!  Maybe when Meadow is napping!”

She is light years beyond me in the “chill” department.

I write about this tonight only because I want to keep it real.  Our little household has a lot of great moments.  Moments of laughter and celebration and memory-making moments.  Times that I don’t want to forget and stories that I want to carry with me for the rest of my life.

But we also have our moments that I would rather forget. Moments that
(thankfully) can’t be captured in a single image but are real moments in
the lives of real imperfect people living real imperfect lives.  I
realize that sometimes these (not so pretty) moments get lost behind
pretty pictures and cute stories. 

Today was not my finest day. 

Sometimes, motherhood can be lonely and isolating.  Emails entitled “5 Mistakes Many Mom’s Make” don’t help the situation.  Maybe that’s why writing about it helps.  I do and will continue to mess up.  I’ll behave like a five two year old and humbly offer apologies time and time again. 

I think that’s okay.

I guess in the end my biggest hope is that our good moments far outweigh the not so good moments. . .

And all of our moments are colored by the love that we share. A love that goes so deep there truly are no words. . .