Having a really-bad-mom-day

Having a really-bad-mom-day
7 May 2013

Today, was not a good parenting day for me. 

Nope, I did not bring my A-game to the field.  Instead I limped about like an afterthought replacement, because “the-real-mom”, was not available for service.  And to be truthful, I was bloody awful.  In fact, I feel rather ashamed. 

I am a mom who is known for her patience.  Yet, today, I fear my skill was sadly lacking.  I am a mom who is known for her dedication.  Yet today, I was pretty undedicated.  I am a mom who is known for remaining calm and unfazed.  Yet today, I was clearly not.  I was fazed.  I was not calm.  I was not patient.  I was not dedicated.  I was not focused.  I was just plain pretty horrid.

I felt a bit rattled and out of my depth.  I knew I was irritated and not doing my best, still I felt unable to pull back.  To centre myself.  To do better.

Perhaps there were some extenuating circumstances.  Grant is away on a trip to Joburg and so I’m flying solo.  Hardly a difficult task to fly solo for a few nights on my own, and I’m pretty used to it, but still.  Luke was sick and stayed home from school.  And I got a phone call from Beaumont during the course of the morning, to let me know that Cole was sick too.  And with Grant being away the previous night too, I found myself with two additional wriggling little bodies in my bed.  It is always lovely to snuggle with the kids.  But on this occasion, I was just going to bed at midnight, when Amber and Cole both came traipsing through, wanting to join me.  It took over an hour for them to settle.  Cole had the coughs.  Amber claimed heat stroke.  Both strangled me.  We had to layer the bedding to accommodate everyone’s internal temperature gage and after about half an hour, I got up to give Cole some meds and rub Vicks on his chest.  And whilst in the kitchen when I was rinsing the spoon from Cole’s syrup, he nicked some Chutney flavoured corn nuts.  And so, I had to force him to brush his teeth once more, as I could not cope with the thought of him breathing chutney corn nuts all over me the whole night long.  Which just made him more awake.  And Amber too.  Eventually during the early mornings hours, I slithered out of the bottom of the bed, left the two of them to hug each other instead and slunk off to Amber’s room to try and catch some z’s there.

So maybe the dice was a bit loaded.  All just a little bit too much.  Normally I don’t need much sleep and I’m far more tolerant, but today, my Mojo was missing.  Added to that, I burnt one round of the Rosti’s I was making as a side dish for supper and so dinner took longer than anticipated.  And I forgot to give Cole his afternoon dose of Ritalin, which in turn had a huge big knock-on effect. Because not only was I not dedicated, unfocused, irritated, not calm, impatient and clearly fazed – so was he.  A terrible combo.

And so I’m feeling guilty.  And horrible.  And unworthy of being a parent.  They deserve better.  I should try harder.  Today I was not fun to be around.

And that in itself is a very hard pill for me to swallow.  Because I’m the fun parent.  The one who jokes and who laughs and who acts goofy a lot of the time.  A person with unending patience.  An internal optimist.  A nice person.  And today I pretty much failed.

But you know what?  Tomorrow will be better.  I know this for sure.  I will wake up in the morning and think “today is going to be a good day”.  And it will.

Everyone is allowed to have a bad day every so often.  My kids will still love me, even though I feel unworthy.  They will still give me a big squeezy hug in the morning, yesterday’s impatience forgotten.

But in order to soothe my conscience and to try and make me feel better, I cuddled with both littlies tonight.  And I apologised to all three of them.  I know I was at fault.  But the funny thing, was that all of them apologised too.  They were also having bad days.  Amber said, “Mommy, we both know how dramatic I can be”.  It’s true.  Cole said, “I’m sorry for fighting with you and being grumpy today”.  Also true. Luke harrumphed – hey that’s practically a gold plated apology and sign of acknowledgment of fault.

Yes, tomorrow will be better.  We’ll start the day with a clean slate.  And I’ll aim to keep it pretty much unblemished the whole day long.

Sorry guys.  My bad.

Tomorrow Mommy’s Mojo will be back. 

 

 

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