Over it! (My mommy resignation...)

I was planning on sitting down tonight and reflecting on making time for mommying. About how, whenever I have a project idea or special activity in mind to break the monotony of staying at home day after day, something always comes up. About how I have to be better at planning ahead, or let some of those somethings pass me by, or at least let my house be a little less clean for them. Maybe I'll think more about this another day. Tonight I don't want to make any more time for mommying. Tonight I am over it.

Before you think I'm a horrible person, let me say a few things in my own defense. 1) If you really think I am awful for wanting a break from being someone's mom, you must not be someone's mom yourself. And 2) I am not saying I want to sell my children to the circus. Maybe just rent them out for a day... I'm not really over it. Tomorrow, probably even later tonight, I will be mushily infatuated with my kids again. But for tonight, I want to be irritated with my kids. And for once today, I got what I want.

Big Sister is going through something that is trying my patience. It could be because her sister is now mobile and able to steal both her toys & her attention. It could be because I am trying to work a bit outside of the home, although she is not going to preschool anymore than she used to. The only bit of our schedule that has changed is an hour or two on Monday mornings and John doing dinner & bath on Thursday nights while I attend a planning meeting. But you would think that I have returned to the workforce full time and left my kid to be raised by wolves. She is clingy, and crabby, and needy, and disobedient, and hateful. But only sometimes. Other times she is wonderful and sweet and helpful... I know that is probably God's way of reminding me not to give up, but the inconsistency is what is making me want to submit my mommy resignation.

For instance, today started out wonderfully. Big Sister cooperated frighteningly well, so that we made it to the free family movie at the Rave with time to spare. She followed every direction, stayed close by, barely talked during the movie (which is more than can be said for pretty much all the rest of the theater) and helped me pick up trash and pack up to leave. I rarely do things in public with my two children (after the Barnes & Noble storytime when my, ahem, angel hit someone else... 's mom.) But this was awesome. Until about halfway home, when she started screaming & crying because I told her she wouldn't be able to watch Big Comfy Couch before naptime today. For heaven's sake, we had just sat still for two hours watching a movie! And, I hate to break it to her, but that goofy show has been cancelled on our PBS affiliate. Obviously, the programming people at the station do not have a daughter like mine. She spent lunch time and naptime alone trying to calm down and return to civilization.

After the drama subsided, we had a pleasant afternoon. We played Go Fish while Little Sister napped, and no fits were thrown when I won a round. But since she never really napped, I had a few things to work on while she was awake. She asked me when I was going to be finished the entire time. The notion of playing by herself is ridiculous to her lately. So I tried to find ways to participate in her imaginary scenarios and still fold laundry, make snacks, wash dishes, etc. The evening was exhausting, but uneventful.

Until bedtime, when all heck broke loose. She pretty much started throwing a fit before we got to the stairs, and continued throwing fits until just a few minutes ago (when I set a timer and threatened her with just about everything in my arsenal if she didn't stop screaming by the time it went off). The hard part for me is that a lot of the acting out is because she wants me. She wants more attention from me; she wants me to have to come back into the room; she wants me to lay down & rub her back; she wants me to stay in her room... you get the picture.

So here's the conundrum: I don't want to withhold myself from her as punishment, but I also don't want to reinforce her bad behaviors by giving her what she wants... giving her me. I feel like no matter what I do, I'll crack open a Developmental Psych textbook in twenty years and find my warped parenting as a case study in how to screw up your kid. And I'm only halfway joking. As a psychologically minded person, I obsess over what message my parenting choices are conveying to my child. I beat myself up all the time- somedays I feel like the mean parent who disciplines too much, other days I feel like a slacker who lets her kid wear pjs all day and serves ice cream for dinner and can't remember when the last time the older one had a bath.

I think that is what makes me want to quit most of all. It isn't putting up with someone's tantrums- I'd still have to deal with that if I went back to work, and I'd have to be a lot nicer to other people's kids. I'm joking- mostly! Instead, it is the responsibility for choosing the best way to react to said tantrums, and the tremendous frustration that comes with such responsibility. I think being a mom is probably about as stressful as being the president. You know how they talk about the red button? And how in a split second the president has to make a decision that will alter the course of countless lives? Well, moms have to make split-second, in-the-heat-of-the-(CRAZY)-moment decisions all the time. Is this behavior okay? If not, do I remember telling them it isn't? If they knew that and still did it, what is the consequence going to be? And my personal favorite: Crap. That didn't work and now they are just more out of control. What now? And all the while, we're thinking about how whatever we do will impact the mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and whatever-else-al health of our children and anyone they come in contact with later in life.

So there you have it. That's why I'm over it. I'm not mean. I'm not impatient. (oh wait, yes I am. That's just not the reason I want a day off). I just want someone else to make these hard decisions for me while I sip some lemonade and finish the Shopaholic series. Any takers? My children are angels, after all...