The past few days I have been in a mommy meltdown. My patience has been wearing thin slowly over the last year or so. This is how I know that I am in need of a vacation. A vacation for a work at home mom generally means time with another parent helping. So basically, I cannot take time off from my own kids, so a vacation to me is my husband being off of work and home. It has been almost two years since I have had a full week of 'vacation' and it is starting to show.
Everything that could have gone wrong went wrong yesterday. The baby's got woken up from their naps by neighbor kids ringing the door bell. Gabby got her hand stuck in the drawer, then later she somehow got McKayla's makeup off of her vanity and was playing with it in her crib. She woke up looking like a hooker on steroids. Of course I had JUST given her a bath because she was covered in mud from playing outside. During bath time I realized that I had forgotten earlier I had sprayed "clean shower" all over the tub and was letting it set. Talk about feeling guilt considering I take every precaution necessary not to put any chemicals on my children using only organic sunscreen and paba free soaps.
Asher was not having any better of a day either, he wanted to run through the hose as I was spraying off the deck and quickly became a scraped up muddy mess also. Not to mention, he is going through a time of not wanting to share anything and continually takes every single thing out of Gabby's hands the minute she has it and yells "mine!" I swore to not raise brats but this terrible two phase is only going to get worse as two turns to three which means no end in sight for me. I did not get any awards for not shaking them either. I briefly allow myself to imagine my sparkly new trophy with a brass nameplate saying " 1st place at keeping them alive another day! " I am possibly picking up two more babies very soon to boot, which means you will find me in a mental institution before you know it. Just kidding, I can handle it. I think.
I love love love working at home. There are far more good days than bad. Do not take this as any kind of complaint. I just want other moms to know it is ok to not have it all together all of the time. The past few days I have posted some comedic relief about my situation on my Facebook page and today I received a phone call from my sister asking if everything was alright. I think she was afraid that I was losing it. She told me that she finds great relief in seeing other moms that aren't pretending it's all peaches and roses all the time and that she herself about had a meltdown at the doctors office with her two boys ages 8 & 6, and she could only imagine what it is like in my situation with taking even more kids even younger than that, out of the house several times a day.
She was right, I am part of a group of women being way too hard on myself. I feel like I'm not the patient person that I want to be with these kids. I yell, I lose my shit, I let them jump on the furniture from time to time so I can unload the dishes, I cry randomly, I laugh when they say something inappropriate. I have no room for false pretenses in this house. I am straight forward with the women I work for too. I tell them when their kid is being awful; I tell them when I'm having a bad day; I tell them everything. It is a blessing and a curse of being one of my employers. You get the truth. Always the truth. My promise to them is that I will treat their kid the same way that I treat my own. That is also a good and a bad thing, as many babysitters do not reprimand their clients kids as they would their own. I however, do not know how to take care of children whilst walking on egg shells.
I wrote this self incrimination piece so that women everywhere will start being honest with themselves and with eachother.
So this is for you friend who just walked in with their 5 year old daughter wearing her bathing suit and cowgirl boots.
This is for you friend bribing your 2 year old son not to be a psycho in the middle of the grocery with a blow pop.
This is for you friend who just fed your four kids popsicles for dinner.
I think you're amazing, and real, and perfect. Stop trying to live up to other people's expectations and just get through today. Smile when you feel like smiling, cry when you need to cry, but don't supress and don't try to be someone you're not. There is an entire village of women relying on your pinterest craft to fail and your dinner to burn. Let's help one another survive this parenting thing by laughing at our imperfections! You never know, you may just win yourself a trophy.
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