Hey, all! I’m over at Kindred Mom again. Here’s a portion of what you’ll find there:
It’s 10 am. I’ve been parenting for hours now. There have been wet beds and tantrums, defiance and messes. Breakfast happened with more than the average number of spills, and I’ve found spilled oatmeal more than once with my bare feet. My highly sensitive nervous system is twitching and I’m on the verge of shutting down. At least two of the four children are yelling at all times, and I can’t seem to get us all reeled back in.
Today was supposed to be different. I wanted quiet time, breakfast, and coffee before the kids woke, so I could step into the morning with a calm, glad heart and the hope that my children would follow my example. But a bad night with several kids coming to my side of the bed in the ungodly dark hours followed by a rough morning of bad behavior (not least of all, my own) has set off a cascade of crap. You know how this goes… interrupted sleep is followed by early morning chaos that cruelly precludes coffee. My nerves are frayed and my responses less than gracious. Their behavior escalates along with mine until all five of us are yelling over each other and I basically hate everything.
I’m always surprised by how the little things throw me. I see my expectations dashed over and over, in a million small ways, and I see how I come undone every. single. time.
It’s not the big things that take me down. I can handle the urgent care trips, weeks spent trying to keep a newborn fed while juggling a household and recovering from birth, severe postpartum anxiety, even a heartbreaking miscarriage. I’ve been through all of these, and for whatever reason, coming back from those was straightforward enough. I’ve been able to dig deep and find what I needed to walk forward, in some cases directly to the support of professionals.
However, when life is just the normal chaos, I freeze. My movements and words become slow and deliberate, as if I’m trying to convince myself and the officer that I have not, in fact, had too much to drink. Internally, there’s a storm of shouting and anger: “Why can’t you just handle it? Why can’t they just obey? Of course she spilled her milk. Of course she did. Why are these people so loud??? You’re the one who decided four babies in a handful of years was a good idea!”…
Read the rest of the post here. I promise it goes somewhere hopeful and potentially useful.
grace enough 