What came first, the fussy children or the cranky mom?
I'd like to think that my mood over the last 3 days can be blamed on my sons. They are both going through some "emotionally fragile" phases due to the fact that they are toddlers and can't regulate their emotions.
Unlike their 30-year-old mother, who certainly can, but has chosen not to.
My kids have been all sorts of naughty, loud, grumpy, defiant, and generally annoying as hell the last couple days, but what I realized is that my sour, cranky, tense mood could perhaps be exacerbating, if not causing the higher level of...passionate expression...in our home. Kids can tap in and feed off emotions, especially those of their parents, and perhaps my mood isn't really due to my kids, but my choice to eat less healthy and get less sleep the last few days, thus causing my kids' moods to devolve into toddler nastiness. When we wake up in the mornings, who is the first one to frown lately.
I'm betting it's been me.
So tonight I apologized to my sons for causing what has been a relatively unfun and stressful few days and promised to try harder tomorrow. One said "I waaab ooo, mama" and the other gave me a silly grin from behind his bottle.
And tomorrow, I really will try harder.
Hey, it's not solely your fault. Those toddlers can be little monsters sometimes! Albeit it super cute ones. Plus it sounds like you were without electricity for 24 hours? I bet you were even low on ddp (throwing you a bone here ... ) so don't beat yourself up. You'll do better tomorrow. Hopefully they will, too.
ReplyDeleteI had one of those days yesterday. I'm pretty sure I yelled at or spoke unkindly to my kids all day yesterday. At first I thought it was them but when I really thought about it, I realized it was me. I was tired. Really tired from too little sleep for several days in a row. I took a 1.5 hour nap while they watched cartoons. Yet I was still grumpy. I felt terrible about the way I was with them. I finally got to take a little mommy time-out and felt so much better. Thankfully all is forgotten today! Hope you can get your little mommy time-out and feel better. Just remember that we all have those days and thankfully our kids are very forgiving.
ReplyDeleteaw, Cori. i'm not a mom, but i can understand that feeling of failure when we can't or don't love perfectly. but love isn't perfect, it's persevering. keep going!
ReplyDeleteOh, I have SOOOO had these days. And I'm usually the cause of them. It starts with some testing of boundaries, granted, but I have yet to learn to take a deep breath, and move on. And, since it's not really a good idea to crack open the wine at 10am, I've come up with a list of ways for me to "restart" when a toddler nap or time-out isn't feasible. It's taped to the side of the fridge and consists of things like "two pieces of candy," "five minutes of catalogs," "an iced tea or izze," "three stair runs" (This one is about the endorphins and blowing off steam. Clearly.) "i can scream louder than you game," and "five minutes of Pandora on a mama-station" Simple things that just make me regroup and take a moment "away."
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