Roller-Coaster

Do you ever wake-up ready to be done for the day?

It seems I have experienced this thrilling feeling for the past two or three days straight. I love my kids, but I also love to sleep. Sleep isn't something that happens much when you have a three year old and a one year old who share a room the size of a small walk-in closet. (That's right - just enough room for a crib and a toddler bed - and I mean ONLY a crib and a toddler bed.) When I don't get my sleep motherhood can become a very interesting roller-coaster ride. Wait. I take that back. Motherhood is already a roller-coaster ride. When I don't get my sleep its more like a roller-coaster ride that I have not been properly secured in.

Okay ladies, it's time to share the truth. We hesitate to say that our kids can be irritating, exhausting, demanding, whiny, and down-right annoying at times. Such a statement might somehow imply that we are bad mothers. It might imply that we are cut out for a good examination from CPS. Is that what we are living in fear of? I don't know why the hesitancy when it comes to admitting the truth about being frustrated with our kids. I know we've all been in that moment when the baby is crying, the two-year old is having a full fledged conniption over a dropped sippy, and you are standing there trying to muster up even a particle of energy in order to respond to these little people who you know you love, but you just don't like them at the moment. To top if all off you are only ten minutes into the day! When I'm tired, these moments of mayhem can feels as frantic as running from an avalanche.

Oh, and then there is the guilt cycle. Once you respond in a not so great way to the sippy being dropped, then we can go into batter-yourself-to-pieces-mode for your poor reaction. AH! And you know all along that a good nights rest would have made the sippy incident laughable.

Well, I don't know you, but I feel better having shared that being a tired mommy is not something that I will EVER be fond of.

That said, I want to share a few things these last few days that have lightened the tired mommy load.

First and foremost would be other mommies. I can't tell you what good going to playgroups and hosting playgroups does for me on these exhausting, irritable days. There is something refreshing about talking with other moms who are in the same exact boat I am in. It's nice to hear that all moms have moments of laughter, moments of extreme love, moments of extreme madness, and moments when you just want to jump off the boat all together. We all have the reasonable part of o brain ur that totally knows that we are not the only ones with an overdramitic two-year-old and a poor sleeper for a baby; but somehow it is still easy to convince ourselves that that everyone else on the block is the perfect mommy.

The other thing that has really gotten me a long way is to just turn off life for a few hours. I shut down the TV, the phones, the computer, the music, and everything else so that there are no distractions and I just get out a puzzle with the girls, I go on a walk, I do whatever they want. I can be such an uptight person that if the phone rings it would be like breaking one of the ten commandments to not answer.

So tell me . . . what keeps you sane on your I-want-to-throw-my-children-out-the-window days?

Sweet Reunion

I didn't leak one bit when I said good-bye to my little ladies last week, but I couldn't hold back the tears when they pulled up to the airport today. I could hardly sleep last night because I was so excited to see them!

It's crazy how these little people become your every minute of life. I was truly confused when I said good-bye to them last week, and then proceeded to walk through the airport WITHOUT a diaper bag, a carry-on, a stroller, a car seat, and two kids in tow. It's funny how I would give an arm and a leg most mornings to just sleep in to my hearts content, but then when I am given the chance to do so i find that my sleep schedule is totally adjusted to my girls and sleeping in isn't even possible without them present! While in the airport it was also funny to people-watch again! (I haven't had my self a good people watching in precisely two years and eleven months.)

While the break was welcoming, I sure missed my two little time-suckers!

Reactive Parenting

It would have been nice to be a little bit more prepared for my first week long separation from my kiddoes, but life happens and I had to be out to Utah in a jiffy to help my dad recover from a serious surgery. (He's doing much better and on the up side now, but he was really scary there for a few days).

We got word on Tuesday that we were needed and we up and scooted out of town on Wednesday morning. (More like ran, sprinted, and jumped all at once) My dad is sick enough that having the girls around would have made things worse, so I got tickets to Phoenix in order to drop my girls off with the amazing Mishler's, and now I am in Utah for a few more days . . . and MAN I miss those two little gals, not to mention my handsome husband.

Being away from them has been good for me though. I have had a chance to breathe and think about being a mom. Kenzie is going through a bitof a brutal phase lately in that she has turned up the drama queen tantrums to an overwhelming level. I was getting to a point where I wanted to tear my hair out. It is SO easy to be a reactive parent. What I mean by that is that it is easy to just kind of parent as you go and react to each situation as it comes. Sometimes you react well, and during those stressful moments you react in such a way that you know is just as childish as the child you are teaching. This trip has given me the chance to think of each little situation that Kenzie has presented me with over the past few weeks and ask myself: "What would have been the best way to deal with that situation". Nine times out of ten I can come up with a loving, good response to that situation. I also found that many situations are more similar than I noticed and the best way to respond can spread across several different situations.

Here are a few thoughts that I had on how to be less of a reactive parent:

1. Talk about a particular bad habit throughout the day with your child rather than just responding to it when it comes. For example, Kenzie is in the habit of getting upset and hitting me lately on her way to time-out. This drives me CRAZY!!!! I can talk to her randomly throughout the day about how her hitting makes mommy feel sad and that I feel happy when I get hugs and kisses. I can mention that any time that she hits that she will have to go to time-out until she can calm down and say sorry. I'm hoping this will help so that when I can see she is getting ready to hit I can say "Remember how we talked about how hitting makes mommy sad?"

2. Prevention! There is a lot that I can do to prevent a lot of things. Many of Kenzie's meltdowns are centered around me having too much going on at once, so I am not paying enough attention. Just the other day I was trying to type up some stuff on the computer. I could hear her frustrated behind me trying to get something unstuck, but I was so intent on what I was doing and I just figured she would figure it out for herself. Well, it quickly turned to a meltdown, a hitting mom, and a time-out. I could have prevented it by helping her calm down before she reached melt-down mode.

3. Finally, give her a hug! The last thing Iwant to do is hug her when she is throwing a fit .. . but I know I like a hug when Iam having my adult version of a meltdown, she could be the same.

This break from the girls has taught me the importance of taking time to think about the way you have dealt with situations in the past and coming up with the best ways to respond in the future . . . wish me luck. :)