Winning the Mother of the Year Over Here

Do you have those days when you feel you just aren't saying the right things? You aren't being an effective mother? You are pretty much fucking your child up for life? When they are 20, on drugs, a high school drop out sitting on the therapist's couch it all leads back to this day and the things you just didn't say right.

Except it isn't just one day. It is many days. I think I have more bad days than good. I am on a ship and at the capricious whim of an almost 4 year old captain. Then the almost 2 year old crazy ass first mate has you by the throat with his insane requests.

Today it was wanting to nurse at the park. I am down with the nursing in public, but at this stage, the child wants only to be able to enjoy my breasts in all their glory. So it is a struggle to try and maintain the teeny tiniest bit of modesty. Widget is pushing my shirt up to my chin so he can pat and hold my entire boob in between his hands as he nurses. We had a tussle over my cell phone, then he plucked one of the double pointed needles from the sock in progress that is in my purse. HE is why the knitting posts are few and far between. Widget is a professional saboteur in training.

The sproglet was all discombobulated when her friend, H, started playing with another child - an older girl. She must have been 8 or 9 and on the brink of puberty in her low-rise jeans with lace up legs and teeny breast buds. She pulled her shirt up to show us a scratch she had received and I really expected to see a naval ring there, or at least a tattoo.

Sproglet didn't want H to play with anyone but her. She was completely heartbroken, sobbing her heart out and whining that H wouldn't play with her because he only wanted to play with HER. H of course tells his mom, my friend R, that he does want to play with Sproglet, but he also wants to play with this other girl, whose name he had failed to obtained. Just like a 5 year old! What am I talking about - just like a MAN!

I said some very ineffective words about how you should be willing to make a new friend and you can't make H play only with you. Much sobbing and whining ensued. R and I looked at each other, because she is trying to get H to be nice to the Sproglet. I was like what the FUCK am I supposed to do in this instance? R and I shared a moment of complete bewilderment together which made me feel a little less like a clueless parent.

Pack it all up and go home. Turn on kiddie tv and wish I had some valium.

When it comes right down to it, days like this make me think I wasn't meant to be a mother. At least not a mother of toddlers/preschoolers. I do much better when they only nurse and sleep and coo. Or when they can make their own breakfast and let me have a little sleep in. But this age is just doing me in. I feel like a failure and a fraud. I really hate this and want to put them on ebay. For cheap.

Then they go to sleep and things are better. Until tomorrow.

I have a mantra: My life is great. I have two beautiful, healthy children and a husband that loves me, even though I am crazy and yell a lot. Let's work on not yelling today. Or at least only yelling if life or limb is in jeopardy. Or at least no yelling before lunch. Maybe I will make it til breakfast. Let bedtime come soon. Let them sleep longer. Let Sproglet not hit/pinch/bite/yank toys away from Widget today. Let me be the mama I want to be. The kind of mama that my kids deserve. Please.