Misery Loves Company

Last night was horrible.

Little Bug woke up at 10:30 pm and proceeded to be awake until 4:30 am. Most of the time he was babbling or singing or kissing my shoulder and begging to be "up on mama," things that would melt my heart during any other time of day.

I struggle with these nights. Beyond sleep deprivation, my patience is very low and I often have mama moments I'm not proud of. I raise my voice sternly, I don't always count to 10, etc. I'm not the mama I want to be on these nights.

Last night was worse because Little Bug has suddenly developed this belligerent toddler attitude...he willfully disobeys, sticks his tongue out in response to direction, and LAUGHS at me when he is scolded.

My mom once told me a story about a time when she spanked me, and I turned and looked her in the eye and laughed. She had to lock herself in her room until she could calm down because her other option was to become a mama she didn't want to be.

Last night, the scene, substituting the spanking for stern words, repeated itself. Little Bug snapped my last thread by hitting me in the face and then laughing about it. I put him in his bedroom and baby gated him in to let him cry himself into exhaustion. We did this horrible cycle for a while.

The next few hours were not pleasant, most likely for anyone in our neighborhood.

This morning I was 20 minutes late getting out of the house, only to hit freak traffic and construction that added a solid 40 minutes to my 7 minute drive (I take locals, for Pete's sake!) . Little Bug was late for breakfast. I won't even begin to go into how late I was for work.

The whole time I was trying to keep a positive attitude on the morning. I made sure to smile and sing to Little Bug, forgiving him even when I wasn't particularly feeling like it. I breezed into work with an air of "let's do this awesome day," even though I was secretly trying to invent ways to call in sick. I even took a moment to marvel at some of my favorite fall wild flowers.

But yeah, today was blowing.

Almost immediately I connected with two of my Internet-turned-real-life friends who have it much harder than I do in the sleep department. I felt bad complaining about my one-off night, but my wise friend noted that "misery loves company."

And it's true. Because after commiserating a bit with them and having some morning chatter with other mama friends, I was feeling much more myself and willing to face the day with a positive attitude.

And two DDPs and a Red Bull, but the friends have helped a lot, too.