Tag: mom struggles

Clean and Clean, then Clean Some More

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I used to like cleaning. My bedroom was always neat and tidy as a kid. I folded and put my clothes away immediately. I dusted my dresser, my CDs, and my stereo. I ran the vacuum cleaner. I liked my space in order.

On Sundays, I would do my chores, dust the living room, and take turns with my older brother to clean the bathroom we shared. Even as I went through college, and moved into my own apartment, I reserved Sundays for major cleaning.

Now cleaning is the bane of my existence. It’s become an every day necessity that never brings the same satisfaction that it used to. Before I could clean a room, walk out of it and come back an hour later and every thing would be exactly as I left it. Now, though, I know that as soon as I turn my back the beautiful little creatures that I carried and squeezed out of my body will have dumped over a bucket of recently collected toys to create a new mess.

Sometimes, they truly suck.

I love my kids, but my house hasn’t been spotless in five years. I know it’s a little cold-hearted to blame a newborn for making a mess. They can’t control whether or not they pee as soon as the diaper comes down. Both my boys were “happy spitters” so that meant a lot of spit up covers burp clothes, bibs, onesies, and shirts.

As they get older, the toys — and their corresponding parts — get smaller and the mess gets bigger.

There are days when I’m so over picking things up, I don’t. Some days, I’ll walk by the playroom or our living room and I avert my eyes and keep it moving. Because sometimes I get to the point where if I pick up the same dinosaur or Paw Patrol pup again, I will throw it away. And if I start throwing things away, they won’t have any toys left.

Instead, I let the mess go until I can’t anymore (i.e. when people are coming over in the case of this weekend). Then I scrub, reorganize and do my best to keep the place tidy until the company arrives. After that, I give up on any pretense that my house is always neat and orderly. I sigh and mentally prepare myself for the major clean up that will happen after everyone leaves.

I write this on the cusp of having fifty people in my house for a birthday party on Saturday. Thankfully, my mother will be hosting Easter this year. Who said small miracles don’t exist?

Sometimes I Just Want to be a Lazy Mama

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A lot of being a toddler mama is constantly on the move. Just when you think you can take a break and sit, you have to get up and keep going. It isn’t always directly related to the kids. It’s all the little things like switching the laundry, loading the dishwasher, or running errands. Sometimes it’s kid related, like all the kid-related activities we sign them up for to keep them busy.

Every extracurricular I’ve signed the boys up for has required my participation as well. From a little ninja warriors class to swimming to gymnastics, I’ve been required to participate in all the activities. I had a thought the other day: Why am I paying someone else to watch me play with my kid?

Some days when I take J to his weekly gymnastics class, I wish his teacher would just take over and chase after him for 45 minutes. Any mom will tell you that as soon as you open your eyes, the stopwatch starts on your day, and you are racing against the clock to get everything done and make it to bedtime. Bedtime is the finish line. It is the pot of gold at the end of the get-through-the-day rainbow.

Until bedtime, we do our best to keep the kids busy and learning, so they don’t fall behind developmentally AND burn any pent-up energy they may have. Lord, it is tiring. There are some days when I barely make it to bedtime myself. I’m on my feet so much that lying in C’s twin-sized bed under his weighted blanket is the most comfortable place in the world.

In my twenties, I worked as a restaurant hostess in New York. During the month of March, I also freelanced at CBS Sports. There were some days when I’d be at the CBS studios on 57th Street until almost 2 AM, just to turn around and head to the restaurant for my 6:30 AM opening shift at the restaurant. Even then, I’ve never felt as tired as I do now that I’m a mom. I don’t know if it’s because I’m older now or because parenting is a constant, daily grind where I don’t get enough sleep most nights.

That’s why, now more than ever, I wish there was just one of these programs where I didn’t have to chase after my kid. I look around at some of the moms — and grandmothers — at J’s gym class, and I see the exhaustion on their faces. There is one mom who, God love her, chases after her three-year-old daughter while her six-month-old sleeps in a car seat in the corner.

Everyone talks about “the hustle” and “the grind” when it comes to work and success. There is no greater hustle and grind than motherhood — dads get some credit too, but it’s a little bit different. So, yea, sometimes I want to be lazy. Sometimes I want to pay someone else to play with my kid while I read a book, zone out on my phone, or — God forbid — nap! Since that won’t be happening, you can find me chasing after J as he bounces down a trampoline or crawls under a tunnel. Maybe you’ll see me walking across a balance beam with C on my back because he uses me as his own personal litter since I have to participate. No rest for the extremely weary!

Is Acceptance the Same as Defeat?

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C is a terrible sleeper. He wakes up in the middle of the night and STRUGGLES to get back to sleep. The struggle is really mine. He’s just hanging out, reenacting episodes of his favorite TV shows and movies…loudly. At the end of last week, though, we seemed to turn a corner to where he slept as much through the night as he ever does. Meaning we’d put him to sleep in his bed, then at some point, he’d wake up, come running into our room, and go right back to sleep.

Then he spent the weekend at my mom’s house.

Hubby and I were happy for the break, so we could sleep through the night and do some much-needed basement reorganizing. We did a lot of heavy lifting, which made the nights sleeping in the bed, just the two of us without kicking, fussy toddlers, a delight. Readers, we even got to cuddle, just the two of us. No squirmy, cute little furnaces in between us.

We picked the boys up on Monday afternoon. They had a good time, as always, at my mom’s. And to her credit, she followed their bedtime routine every night they were there. For some reason, however, C came back, and his sleep pattern was all out of whack. It wasn’t so much out of whack as it was back to what it was before. He woke up at 1 AM both nights and wouldn’t go back to sleep for hours, if at all.

Before we picked them up, I felt rested. Even just shy of reinvigorated — the only thing that would reinvigorate me at this point would be two weeks by myself on a beach and a stack of books from my TBR pile. Since that isn’t happening anytime soon, this girl will take a few days’ reprieve and a comfy reading chair for an hour or two.

But I digress. The kid wouldn’t go to sleep. He kept singing “Be Prepared” from The Lion King. While he was singing, I was googling pressure points to try and help him. Just so you know, that didn’t work either. 😭

I think I’ve finally reached the acceptance point in my grieving over lack of sleep process. I’ll never sleep again, and I’m begrudgingly ok with it — no, I’m not — but that is what motherhood is all about, right? Sacrificing all for the sake of our kids.

Wins Will Come, and They Will Definitely Go

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Some days, I feel like I have this mom thing down. Everyone sleeps through the night — not in their own bed — but through the night nonetheless. Then there are other days when everything I thought I knew goes flying out the window and I realize I’m Jon Snow beyond the Wall.

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Thursday was unseasonably warm for mid-February, so I took J to the park. As we were walking up to it, I overheard two money talking about how they just wished their kids would listen sometimes. “Mom just needs a win.”

And isn’t it something how little it takes for we moms — and dads — to feel like we’re ok. That we’re on the right track and everything really is going to be ok. Right now, as parents to tiny humans, it’s hard for everything we do wrong to feel like an epic Bay of Pigs level failure.

It occurred to me the other day that the reason we think our failures are so epic is because when our kids feel, they feel BIG. That morning, for example, a different van picked C up for school. The seatbelt on his usual seat was broken — the strap that allows me to loosen and tighten the straps was broken — and this was unacceptable to young C. He had a total meltdown. Was damn near inconsolable. It took about fifteen minutes to get him into buckled into another seat.

After the bus was gone, I talked myself down for calling the bus company and yelling at the dispatcher about the broken seatbelt. I also talked myself down from posting a rant on my town’s mom’s page. Instead l, I took a deep breath, messaged C’s teacher in the app to let her know he’d be coming in hot so that they would be prepared to console him. Then I took J to the park.

What I’ve learned in the almost five years that I’ve been mom-ing is — can’t believe C will be five soon😬🥰 — if my reactions are as big as his, then we’ll never grow. Him as a boy who needs to learn how to manage emotions and me as his mother who needs to teach him how.

So yea, some days you’ve got it all together. Some days you don’t. And some days, it starts well only to fall apart and come back together again…and then maybe fall apart again by bath time. It’s the cycle we live in now as parents that won’t end until…we’ll I don’t think it ever ends.

***inhales deeply, long exhale, followed by a looooooong sip of wine.***

The Love & Hate of Motherhood

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Last Sunday, I hit the ceiling of my patience. Between a lack of sleep and feeling overall run down, I couldn’t deal with the screaming-jumping-running-around of it all. I locked myself in my office for a few hours to snack and decompress. And it got me thinking. There is so much to love about being a mom. There is also so much to hate about it. And it really is ok to hate some of it. Motherhood asks that we give a lot more than we get most days. Sometimes it’s a little bit too much. The dichotomy of motherhood is the strangest mix of joy and sorrow, love and frustration there is.

Here’s my love/hate of motherhood list.

Love: All the cuddles, squeezes, and kisses. There are moments in the day where a surprise squeeze from my boys is exactly what the doctor ordered and it makes everything feel better.

Hate: All the cuddles, squeezes, and kisses. Then there are days when they are hanging off me like a necklace. Clinging to me like the barnacle on the bottom of a boat. It all feels like too much and I just don’t want to be touched anymore. To the point where, when A comes home from work, I don’t have enough affection left to show him love.

Love: Watching them learn new things and explore the world around them. One of the amazing things about having kids is learning about the world through their eyes. Their enthusiasm and pride after they accomplish something new. Like, when J says, “It worked!” every time he owes in the potty. EVERY. TIME. Or whenever C figures out how to do something — like opening the child lock we put on the fridge because he kept leaving the door open — and he says, “I did it!” Even when it’s something I don’t want him to do, I love the enthusiasm. It’s infectious.

Hate: How hard it is to keep them teach them about the world and protect them from it at the same time. In a world of police brutality and ALICE drills for pre-schoolers, what are parents supposed to teach their kids about trust? One day you can have lunch and laugh with a friend, the next day you’re running from them in an attempt to save your own life…as a child. How do we teach them how to trust the police when it feels like every other day there’s another story about officer-involved violence against civilians?

Love: The extra purpose in life that having children gives you. I’m not the kind of person who thinks having children makes me superior to anyone who doesn’t. But raising kids is an important job, probably the most important job, we can have. We’re literally molding the future. When every thing else goes away. When you get laid off or divorced or lose people, your little ones are always there. So even when we feel like we have no purpose, they are our purpose.

Hate: Motherhood takes away so much of our autonomy, and sometimes it all feels like too much. Taking care of yourself can sometimes feel like a daunting task. Of course, caring for another person will feel overwhelming at times. Knowing that they are solely depending on you to keep them alive and mold them into good people…sometimes it’s an utter mindfuck. The person you were before you have kids and who you are after are two very different people. In some ways that’s a good thing. In others, we have to give up some of the things that make us feel the most like ourselves.

Motherhood asks a lot of us, and sometimes it feels like it takes without giving. Other times it asks nothing and gives so very much. See, perfect dichotomy.

Just Call Me Stuck-in-a-Rut Mama!

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Originally, this post started as me venting about how stuck in a loop I’ve been feeling. How much some days I want to let the kids take control. Nothing will shake you out of a routine like a winter in New England.

C came into our room around 1 AM — not really that abnormal — and couldn’t/wouldn’t go back to sleep — also not that abnormal — until I gave him some melatonin. While he got back to sleep, I was fully awake, playing Solitaire on my phone when A’s alarm went off at 4:30.

As I lay there lamenting my lack of sleep, A came rushing back to our bedroom, letting me know it had snowed overnight — it was raining when we went to bed — and he wasn’t going to have time to shovel our “only annoying that it’s big when it snows” driveway, so I’d have to do it to clear it for the school bus! Yay.😑

Somewhere in the middle of clearing the left entrance — we have a U-shaped driveway — the call came in that school was cancelled for the day. Why? I’m not really sure. They’d already cleared the street, and there was only about two inches in the driveway.

So my loop was interrupted by the weather and school cancellations. While the one day interruption was “pleasant,” it won’t fix the stuck way I’ve been feeling as of late.

My loop currently looks something like this: wake up. Work out. Get C dressed. Make C breakfast. Make and pack lunch and snack for C. Find something for J to eat because he doesn’t like eggs. Shower. Brush C’s teeth. Get him on the school bus. Spend the day entertaining J/cleaning/attempting to work on side projects. Rinse, lather, repeat.

I also find myself having the same conversation with the boys every day — “Stop fighting!”, “Pick up your toys!”, “Go to the potty!” It’s a miracle I still know other words in the English language.

There are some days when I’m so sick of the routine that I want to just let the boys go wild(er than usual) and let the chips fall where they may.

Of course, I can’t do that. I’ve been working on potty training J this week and have to make sure he doesn’t pee behind the couch…again. The boys also have a tendency to get into wrestling matches, usually at C’s instigation, and I have to make sure they don’t kill each other. So what’s a burnt out, stuck-in-a-rut mama to do?

Keep calm, take a breath, and soldier on. Also, hide in the pantry and eat snack pack Pringles…and pour a glass of wine while making dinner.

But seriously, I think I need to find something to balance out the everyday mundanity. Committing to my #65in365 goal is helping to keep me a little bit sane. I get most of my reading done when J insists that I can’t work, and I must watch Cocomelon/Little Angels/Blippi/Spidey and his Amazing Friends with him. Outside of that, though, what’s a stuck-in-a-rut mama to do?

I know that these things I’m complaining about are all part of motherhood, but isn’t that all the more reason to find a way to achieve the “just treading water” feeling of only communicating with toddlers all day? What’s your thing to help combat stay-at-home mom burnout?

Well…Those Resolutions Were Short-Lived

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So…two of my resolutions are already out the window. I know it’s still January 1st, but I’ve already given up. Don’t judge me! Here’s what happened…

Resolution #1: Make healthier dietary choices.

After an early morning of cuddles and being climbed all over, because let’s be real, there is no sleeping in with toddlers. J declared that he was hungry and wanted pancakes. We all made our way to the kitchen. While hubby made eggs for C, I pulled out the pancake mix and a bowl. J wanted to help, so I scooped out a cup of mix, brought the bowl to his level, and handed him the measuring cup. He neatly dropped it in the bowl. We repeated the step with the water and mixing. Then I asked if he wanted chocolate chips in them, and of course, he said yes. He’s a toddler; there was no chance the answer was going to be no.

With the batter mixed, we heat and butter the pan. He adds the batter — when I can, I let the boys cook; I’m raising them to be self-sufficient — and we wait for the pancakes to reach the appropriate flipping doneness. Once they were ready, he had two yummy chocolate chip pancakes. There was enough better for two more pancakes…and there went my first resolution.

I know what you might be thinking, “Two chocolate chip pancakes to celebrate the start of the new year isn’t so bad” or “You still had better left, you were trying no to be wasteful.” Reader, you would be right on both accounts. And it would have been fine had I stopped there. After breakfast, hubby ran to Home Depot to grab hooks we need for a basement organization project. I put The Grinch on for the kids, because they are still feeling the Christmas spirit — C asked to see Santa today — and went to my bedroom to fold laundry and watch The Woman King. Clearly, I’m done with Christmas. I got about two minutes in before the kids came running in for help with turning on the giant piano mat my youngest brother got them for Christmas. Fun fact, FAO Schwarz makes toys; I thought it was a dead brand. The more you know.🤷🏽‍♀️

The interruptions kept coming, and I kept pausing the movie. Then J pooped, and we got into a fight while I tried to clean his bum because he REFUSED to stay still. By the time we finished, I needed chocolate. He chased me down the hall crying as I went to toss the diaper and go down to the basement to pull chicken from the freezer. I closed the door behind me so he couldn’t follow. It may sound like I was overreacting to my kid wanting me, but this is also the kid that woke me up and tried to drag me out of bed at 6 AM to turn on Spidey and his Amazing Friends in the playroom.

Hubby came back as I went downstairs, so he picked up a crying J and gave him a hug. On my way back to my bedroom to restart my movie — which I found out hubby turned off in favor of the Patriots game — I grabbed two Lindt milk chocolate balls only for C to catch me in the act of eating the first one and subsequently start cry when I pop the second one in my mouth. I know, I’m an asshole.

J soon realized that I had chocolate, slid out of his father’s lap and declare that he wanted chocolate too. I told the boys if they gave each other a hug — since I’d managed to upset them both AND I’m trying to teach them to lean on each other during the tough time — they’d each get a chocolate. They did. They both got a chocolate ball, I gave one to hubby and ate two more myself. SEE resolution is all shot to hell!

Resolution #2: Yell less; give “gentle parenting” a fighting chance.

My boys are not built for gentle parenting. I’m not built for gentle parenting. That’s not true. I’m not built for sustained gentle parenting.

J — today really wasn’t a good day for he and I — declared he wanted a cookie while we were watching the Pats game — I wasn’t super upset that my movie had been turned off; I love the Pats, they’ve just broken my heart a lot this season. I said, we don’t have any cookies. A few minutes later my very capable 2.5 year old came back with a Tupperware container of leftover cookies from holiday baking we’d done that I’d completely forgotten about. I had a cookie, C grabbed a cookie, J took two cookies.

Halftime hits and hubby heads to the basement to organization project started. I’m lying in the middle of our bed and J is behind me. I get up to head to the bathroom only to turn around and see that J has DECIMATED a gingerbread cookie on our bed. He ground it into a FINE dust of gingerbready goodness. I let out a frustrated scream, kicked him off the bed, and grabbed the dustbuster. I also had to tell him to take off his pants because they were covered with gingerbread dust.

This was not a gentle parenting moment. There were no calm words. There was only “why did you just do that?”, “get off the bed and take of your pants!”, “don’t come back up here!” yelling moments. I commend parents who are fully committed to gentle parenting and make it work for them. I have toddlers who talk back and give me evil laughs when they do something wrong.

I’m starting to think that they find my emotional outbursts funny, though. This morning C kept playing with the Santa salt and pepper shakers that I haven’t decommissioned yet. I told him sternly but calmly — before I gave up on gentle parenting — to put them back and leave them alone. He said, “Are you mad?” I replied, “No, but I would like you to listen when I tell you to do something.” He asked me if I was mad twice more, then I gave in and made an angry face, which got an uproarious chuckle from him.

I give up. I’m just going to sit in a corner and eat chocolate for the rest of the year. Catch y’all in 2024 when I start from scratch again if diabetes doesn’t set in and remove me from this mortal coil!

Happy New Year!!🎊 May you have better luck with your resolutions than I did.😳

Chocolate and Wine Make Me Happy…and Might Lead to My Demise…

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Often in my life as a mom, I’ve found myself taking a few minutes after the dishes are done and before I dive into tubby time to take a deep breath. I also either inhale a chocolate bar or chug half a glass of wine. Whichever I choose depends on the kind of day I’ve had. Sometimes it’s both. It’s my slow descent toward either diabetes or alcoholism. Not really with alcoholism, but diabetes might be a real possibility…

Before mommyhood, I wasn’t a stress eater. I think that’s because the things that stressed me out were tasks. Tangible action items I could go about completing as long as I buckled down and did them. Attend a planning committee meeting? Check. Finish an article or research paper? Done. As long as I planned my time accordingly, I was good. Hell, I was kind of annoying. In college, I would finish papers a week before they were due; I was that good at time management.

Now, though? Time management is a foreign concept. You can’t “time manage” being a mom. No matter how hard you try. Get the kid to sleep by 8? Sure, if C doesn’t have to use the potty five times or if J will stop talking through the bedtime story. Get the house clean? Sure, J doesn’t insist that we watch the SAME EPISODE of Blippi for the 500th time.

There’s no more shutting the world out by blasting music and banging out a paper. There is no more on time or showing up early. If we do show up early, it’s 100% an accident. Heck, there are no more running quick errands. Now that I’m home with J, every time we have to leave the house, he wants to know where we’re going and what we’re going there for. The only place that doesn’t require a detailed explanation is the library.

As moms, we all have to find our coping mechanisms to help keep our sanity when all feels lost, and the kids won’t stop screaming for five minutes so we can have a complete, uninterrupted thought. Speaking of uninterrupted thoughts…it has taken me FOUR days just to write this short little post. In the time since I started writing this post, I’ve eaten three Snickers bars (two full-sized, one snack size), Gummy bears (chocolate is not my only sugar-based vice), and five Lindt milk chocolate balls. Two of those Lindt balls were consumed in the last twenty minutes while I multitasked signing up for a warranty on a device, checking for an update on my community post about my broken printer, starting Home on one tablet, and Pinkfong and Baby Shark’s Space Adventure on another, then turning off both tablets ad getting the boys in the tub.

If I weren’t already exhausted and didn’t have to finish tubby and get them to bed, I might go back to the kitchen for a glass of wine… Alas, the bottle will stay corked until Thursday, when our families descend for Thanksgiving. That doesn’t mean I can’t have one more Lindt ball, right? Sign me up for the insulin shots now, people!