So many opportunities to be humbled, so little time...

Last week at CC, during lunch, Eva said she had to got potty.  This is a big deal.  I have to unstrap Quinn from his booster, haul them all away from the table and march down the hall to the potty.  It takes no less than 10 minutes and lunch is only a half an hour.  Sometimes, if I'm feeling super tired, I'll ask a mom at the same table to keep an eye on the children who don't have to go.  But that day, because I was feeling super ballsy, and because Eva is the oldest and she knows where the potty is, I told her she could go by herself.  She looked dubious, but went. 

She wasn't even out the door of the cafeteria when Sully said his hands were sticky and he needed to wash them.  (He says this no less than five times per meal, even though I encourage him every time to just wait until he's done eating so I don't have to wipe them every two to three minutes.)  I told him to hurry after his sister and wash them in the bathroom with her. 

Within five minutes, two less than flattering things happened, another mom approached our table with a stern expression on her face and Sully in tow and said, "Does he belong to you?  I found him wandering in the hall saying he couldn't reach the sink in the bathroom.  He should be supervised.  I say this only because we were reminded to stay with our small children at all times." 

A myriad of emotions coursed through me, the biggest two rearing their heads being shame, closely followed by anger.  I'm not sure what showed up on my face, being the open book that I am, but I just said, "Right.  Of course."  She walked away and I ventured a glance at the two moms at my table, both parents to boys in Eva's class, both parents of multiple small children, both infinitely more understanding than this woman had just been.  They were also both fighting back giggles.  My mood immediately lightened.

"Let's go, Sully."  I grabbed his hand, barely aware that the uber-mom had taken to patrolling the hall again.  As we rounded the bend to the bathroom, uber-mom, who was now coming back in the direction of the cafeteria, made an about-face, headed for the bathroom, and muttered, "Someone's crying in here, I better find out what's going on."  It seemed to me that she was actually taking delight in taking me and my kind down.  The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach only deepened when the door to the bathroom was opened and Eva's familiar cry reached my ears.  I could see her sneakers dangling near the toilet in the first stall.  I sighed, resigned, and said with great defeat, "This one is mine, too."  I didn't even bother to look at uber-mom's face.  I didn't want to see the judgement in her eyes.

When I got back to the table, I shared my tale of woe with my friends.  They both laughed and laughed. My one friend kindly said she would pray grace over me.  I was fighting my pride and my pride won.  I said, somewhat indignantly, "I'm pretty sure she has ONE kid!  I saw them walk in this morning and he's like 10!"  She's older than we are, easily in her late forties, so I doubt she has any smaller children and I've never seen her in the nursery.  Knowing both of these things helped assuage my guilt a tiny bit, but I knew I was in the wrong.  Laziness had kept my butt securely anchored to my chair when Eva had started this ball in motion.  I should have sucked it up then, gave Quinn copious amounts of cheese, and asked my friends to keep an eye on him the first time around, instead of having to be admonished by a woman who seemed to have never been in my shoes before. 

I seem to be eternally caught in that web of wanting my children to be self-sufficient and never grow up.  The contradiction drives me crazy as much as them being little and needy drives me crazy and nearly as much as I love being needed.  It all makes me want to run, full-tilt, into a corner, pull my hair and scream. 

I learned some valuable lessons that day, one being that I should never assume my children are ready for something, when it's very possible they are not.  Another being that I can't stop being a mom just because I'm tired --something I know and hold in the back of my mind always, but something inherently more obvious at two in the morning.  I also learned that I do not enjoy being admonished now any more than I did in elementary school. 

I'm committed to improving on these "issues."  But I also need to improve my attitude toward the mother who reigned me in.  I'm still raging at her on the inside.  It's not so much that she did it.  It was how she did it and how I perceived her while she was doing it (which is clearly for ME to wrestle through).  If any of the other women in that room with three plus kids had said to me what she did, even if they'd had the tone she had had, I would have been okay with that because they have walked where I have walked.  I want to pull her aside the next time I see her and say (if I may uncensor myself here completely), "Listen, I know you meant well last Thursday in pointing out that my toddlers were unattended, but your tone and delivery were lacking much in the way of empathy.  I'm trying not to be judgmental in the same way I perceived you were judging me, but I can't help but notice that you seem to only have one child and he appears to be much older than my children.  Would it kill you to try to put yourself in my shoes for five minutes?  To dig down deep and find that bone of understanding? And, if I'm wrong, and he's the youngest of a whole brood of children, where is your empathy as my sister in Christ?! Are you that perfect of a mother?"  Ironically, just as greatly as I desire empathy from her, I should be trying to muster some of that FOR her.  I have no idea what her life circumstances are.  I learn new things about these moms I'm mucking through the trenches with every Thursday.

I'm struggling with knowing that I was in the wrong and wanting to throttle her.  It's not a pleasant tug of war.  I'm confident that approaching this with humility is the only way to go.  A confrontation, of any kind, is not.  So until we meet again, and I know we will, I will pray for the swift death of my pride and for God to grow in her a modicum of understanding for us moms in the dregs of toddlerhood.

Stubbornacity

I don't think being hormonal and parenting mix.  Regrettably, for all parties involved, you can rarely have one without the other.  I now see the wisdom, far beyond the charitable and philanthropic gesture it is, of adopting. 

I often wrestle with the obvious position of blessing I am in and the disturbing knowledge of just how hard it is to be a stay-at-home mom.  Today started out and has been going just like any other day, but it's only noon and I feel like I've been mentally torn to shreds.  Sully began by whining, Quinn by crying and all of them by needing to be told what to do repeatedly.  My patience is wearing so thin by this point, if the essential savior of each day --quiet time-- were not a mere one hour and 45 minutes away, I would fear for the lives of my young brood. 

              **CAUTION** The below photo is not for the faint of heart!**CAUTION**

This is a pretty accurate depiction of how my brain feels...on kids.

I just finished a reading lesson with Eva, during the course of which Sully made Quinn cry no less than three times, Eva balked at EVERY attempt to learn and I nearly pulled out most of my already thinning hair.  I walked away from it thinking, "Can I do this? Am I kidding myself? Should it be this hard?"  You know, and I know, that I've asked myself these questions so many times in the past 11 weeks that it's become redundant.  (Just call me Lady Redundant Woman.  Props to "Word Girl.")  At what point does the asking of the question become the answer?  I mean, if you've stopped asking the question, normally, that means you've had it answered.  But if, on the other hand, you keep asking it over and over, does that mean that you don't want to know the answer, you honestly don't know the answer, or you know the answer but can't bring yourself to say it out loud? 
Yesterday was CC and Eva was a complete wreck.  The worst she's ever been there.  I actually had to pull her out of class and have a little chat with her, which to me, felt completely ineffective.  The little pisser actually had the nerve to tell me she was paying attention and knew what she was doing.  The kids were practicing the tin whistle and trying to learn "Mary Had a Little Lamb."  She wasn't even looking at the teacher.  She was blowing at all the wrong times and  not sitting in her seat.  In short, she was all over the place.  It was the end of the day, the kids were already a mess from it being the first time back since Thanksgiving break, so maybe I should have been easier on her.  I don't know. 

I said to her, once out of the room, "Wait.  So you're telling me you can actually play 'Mary Had a Little Lamb?' You already know how, huh?  Okay.  Fine.  Play it for me."  Naturally, she refused. 

I think the thing that blows my mind the most about all of this is the level of sass involved at such a young age.  I really don't think I had balls like that at five.  I certainly don't recall bluffing about the amount of knowledge I had.  If I didn't think I could do something, I admitted to it.  And if my parents were staring at me menacingly while calling my bluff, I highly doubt I would hold up under that kind of pressure.  She just stares me down like it's the easiest thing she's done all day, which makes me wonder if I'm not being hard enough on her. 

I think Eva and her shenanigans would be enough to push most parents to the brink, but add Sully and you've got a very effective cocktail for insanity.  He makes Eva's stubborness look like a picnic, full of the sweetest, fluffiest, most delightful pastries imaginable. ('Cause that's what MY ultimate picnic would look like, of course.  Theron's would be full of different pork products.)

He's stone-cold stubborn to the max.  You'll tell him to stop doing something or to do something and he'll look you in the eye and do it again or smartly tell you "no."  Even when he knows the consequences.  Especially when he knows the consequences.  Sigh.

And Quinn, God bless his chubby, baby heart, has taken, lately, to shunning me at every possible turn when his father is in the house.  I've tried not to take it personally, but it's not been easy, given my hormonal condition and the fact that I was his favorite up until a few days ago.  Last night he woke up from a bad dream in a complete panic and I wanted to comfort him, but he screamed, "NO!" so loudly whenever I came near him I was afraid he'd wake up the other kids.  Daddy had to save the day.  I guess I should be glad that he got less sleep than I did.

I keep reassuring myself that this stubborn streak in my children will serve them well in adulthood if we can mold it, by the grace of God, into something useful.  Tenacity is not a bad trait to possess.  But having the wisdom to know when to hold on and when to let go is invaluable.  Right now, I just pray that I can get them through it without killing them or myself in the process.