News Flash

Parenting is hard.

I'll wait while you recover from the shock of this brand new information.

Robert and I had a really tough morning. We both freaked out and I behaved about as well as he did. So I do not feel awesome about that. I then confessed myself to the preschool teacher, who presumably would call child protective services if I had in fact turned into a monster. She chuckled at that suggestion. I confessed to several coworkers, my husband, a dear friend, and a few Starbucks workers (note to self - go back and put more money in tip jar) just to be sure. None of them appeared shocked, made moves towards a phone, or, in some cases, seemed to understand why I was telling them this. But they were all very gracious and kind.

Sigh.

After numerous kind souls said assorted versions of calm the eff down, I seem to have at least distracted myself enough to act like a vaguely normal person for the rest of the day. I even got a little work done. And we had arranged child care for the evening, so I went to see Frozen. (I liked it. Too scary for our kiddos though.) So I got a time out. Which of course made me miss my kiddos terribly. I wanted to come home and cuddle them. But I was supposed to be having a break. Hence the movie. How else was I going to get through a whole evening of break? Sigh. I refer you to my post on why all the mamas are crazy, here. Tonight was another shining example of this phenomenon. Not that I needed any more of those.

Each time I have a moment like this, I think, this is That Seminal Moment where I will Learn the Valuable Thing and Henceforth Be Transformed. And sometimes it kinda is for a bit. And then something changes, for the harder, and there's another Seminal Moment. And I'm all mad at myself for not Learning My Lesson the previous n times, where n is large. And this leads to Capitalizing All The Things. Which is really not good prose.

I'm trying to learn to be more gentle with myself. I kinda suck at it. But if nothing else, I certainly don't want my kiddos to be as hard on themselves as I am on me. So there's that. Either learn how to treat myself gently, or learn how to fake it really convincingly.

Okay, wine poured, bathtub a-calling. I want a hot tub. A lot. I bet I can get a psychiatrist to write me a prescription for one so I can pay for it with flex spending dollars...

Much love always,
Suzi