Have you ever heard that Thomas S. Monson quote that says, “Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’”? Tonight I’m trying to muster up my courage. Mostly, I feel like I’d rather just run away to Mexico (or anywhere warm) than try again tomorrow. Today was a rough day, and I was a bad mom.
I didn’t sleep well, so the day got off on the wrong foot immediately. Then Adelia peed a Lake Eerie sized puddle on my kitchen floor, and one in her bedroom, and then another one in the bathroom, all before 10:am. One of which the clean-up efforts caused us to be late getting Ivan to preschool. I don’t like to be late. After accident number 3 I told Adelia she was acting like a baby and was going to wear a diaper for the rest of the day. She cried.
Then I assigned Lincoln a school assignment to work on while I went and spent a half an hour trying to get Ollie down for a nap. Instead of working on it he did nothing, except pester Adelia, who came running up the stairs shrieking at the top of her lungs, and Lincoln came barreling up after her bellowing at the top of his lungs that she needed to sit in time out. You better believe it woke up the baby, who I’d just laid down. I had a few choice words to say to them, and a few more when I found out that Lincoln hadn’t done a thing on his school in the last 30 minutes. I can’t stand when he wastes my time. It’s one thing if he doesn’t understand how to do something. But when he just fiddles around and sharpens his pencil a million times, and goes and gets 40 drinks of water, and pesters Adelia, and never even opens the book to see what it is he’s supposed to do, that’s where I draw the line. And today he heard about it.
At lunch Ivan and Adelia finished all their food and wanted seconds, so I told them they could have them. Then Lincoln started freaking out that they were taking all the food, but he hadn’t even touched his yet. I told him they could have seconds, and that if he finished he could have seconds if there were any left, but that he didn’t have a claim on any seconds while he still had a full plate sitting in front of him. He told me that I was stupid, and I promptly sent him to his room. He cried and cried. But what was I supposed to do? He doesn’t get to treat me that way. And he’s been having major issues with showing respect to adults lately.
Fast-forward to dinner. I made stir-fry. And it was dern good stir-fry if I do say so myself. Well, we’ve hardly said “Amen” when all three kids start complaining about how they don’t like stir-fry, to which I respond that they don’t have to eat it, but this is what’s for dinner, and if they don’t like it they can starve. Seriously. Maybe I’m mean mom, but at my house it’s take it or leave it. I am not a short order cook. And they can bloody well be grateful for the food that’s put in front of them. At this point Lincoln started pretending to throw-up because the food is so horrible. Time out for Lincoln. Aaron was furious. He told Lincoln that he was being very rude and made him apologize. And I told the kids that the next person to voice a complaint about the cooking was going to go straight to bed.
Of course, tonight was Aaron’s Elder’s Quorum meeting, which means I put the kids to bed by myself. I won’t go into details, but it wasn’t pretty. Stories were taken away, tears were shed. Everybody lived. At least so far. But I might run away and never come back. I’ve never been a very courageous person. And the thought of doing this all over again tomorrow is a very forbidding and intimidating one indeed.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go drown myself in a bowl of chocolate ice cream and a hot bath.
3 comments:
I'm sorry! I hate days like that!
I would have done ALL those things. You are not a bad mom. A bad mom would have thrown in the towel and not cared enough to make the hard choices. Go you dudesie.
Love this! I'm sure many moms can relate to these days and how we feel bad because we didn't sing bedtime songs or read bedtime stories to each child or all the other gazillion things that drag the dreaded bedtime escapades on FOREVER. But, hey! At least you didn't get locked out of your car and have to wait for a police officer to break in, just in time for the neighborhood music class to get out. Ha! And it always takes a bigger toll when you have to stop everything several times a day to go clean up pee. I think you're amazing though! --Alicia
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