Hanging On

I feel like someone who has Alzheimer’s and is totally aware of that, but can’t stop a runaway train hurdling toward the abyss of cognitive dystrophy. Except it’s with my kids. I am acutely aware of how I won’t get this time back, but somehow I can’t get to a place of blissed out motherhood these days the way I did when Gillian was little. I remember with fondness watching her in absolute peaceful happiness personify rocks, but those days are long, long gone and have been replaced with a constant feeling of Just “hanging in there”. I guess I know the various factors contributing to not feeling super connected and tender every second. They go kindof like this:

1.      Whining-constant

2.      Fighting and bickering-constant

3.      Selective listening-constant

4.      Resistance to acquiescence-constant

5.      Mess making-intermittent

6.      Saying no when we ask them to do something-more often than not (which = Time Out)

7.      Meltdowns-for whatever reason, more frequently of late with Addie

8.      During said meltdowns, zingers thrown about like “I DON’T LOVE YOU”; “IF YOU SAY THAT I WON’T LET YOU PLAY WITH MY PONY”; “I HATE YOU IF YOU DO THAT”, “I WILL ONLY LOVE YOU IF YOU APOLOGIZE” (the apology usually follows something unfortunate she did to ME-I have yet to know how she figured out how to be so hurtful; each one is followed up by me with a “Well, I’m sorry you are feeling that way. I love YOU.”).

9.      I never get enough sleep

10.  We have lots of stress having to do with changes that are putting a serious financial strain on us.

11.  Don’t need to say it but: EVERYONE IN THIS HOUSE THINKS THEY KNOW EVERYTHING (including yours truly). Yeah, that’s a big one.

Add that all together and VOILA! Skipping record quality of correcting the children, asking them not to hurt eachother, putting them in time out, all of this while I am feeling blaringly exhausted, stressed, and overextended. It makes sense, then, that the kids’ behavior isn’t nearly so tolerable in this state of existence. With of all this surficial BS distracting me from living and connecting with my family, you can add a heaping serving of guilt to that tall order (oh, that and the added guilt of knowing I am whining about a situation that could be approximately 90 million universes worse in a slew of other infinite possible circumstances-the proverbial White Whine).

So, what do we do? Well, I would say take a deep breath and know it won’t last forever, except we have had a pretty good run of disruption lately. It all started with that oven fire in July (I haven’t told you about that yet-needless to say, we finally got the house put back together in September). OK, so I’ll just say we need to take a lot of deep breaths and have faith that this is in our deck of cards, that it is just a part of the plan en route to sunnier days. Because there are no accidents, you know.

Another good thing would be to show myself some compassion, but that has never been one of my better virtues. I think a good bit of parenting your second child when you have a first child pleading for your every extra second of energy involves operating in survival mode. All the time-which gives the second child the shaft, completely, and makes you feel like an absolute failure most of the time as a mother. I’m not sure if it’s that or the fact that our psychological angst is manifesting itself in all kind of crazy in their behavior that makes it feel worse.

So, here I am, having my usual October-where things are drastically in flux, where I am feeling melancholy at best, and where God is asking me to step off the cliff and have faith he will provide. I need to take better care, get some sleep, do some yoga on top of my walking, restart the meditation, and put our current brand of crazy in perspective. I need to have more afternoons like the other weekend when the girls and I made a giant mound of leaves and played in it for hours. I know when I do that, my lenses will be clear to see my beautiful little girls being beautiful, and silly, and sweet, for me to see my blessed life, and so that I can recapture my usual iron clad tenacity for dealing with what the world throws my way.