Coming Up Short

Yesterday was awful.

Even with the perspective that some rest and a new morning bring, yesterday will go down in the annals as perhaps one of my worst mothering days.

This whole week, in fact, can suck it. I lost my temper more times than I care to admit, culminating with a terrible performance where I screamed in my daughter’s face, grabbed her arm and caused her to slip and fall in a puddle of her own urine.

She had yet another accident – the third one of the week – fooling around and dancing while I fed Henry. I knew she had to pee and repeatedly told her to go. Helpless to get up and force her (see: feeding baby), my voice got louder and louder and the threats got more and more dire until she finally consented to go potty.

The she peed all over herself, her clothes and the floor.

Again.

I lost it. I’m tired of the not listening and I’m tired of giving her choices, only to have her make the wrong decision. As I watched her slip and fall, I felt a terrible wrenching in my heart and I knew the memory of her face at that moment – and my too-tight grip on her arm – will stay with me always.

It is a moment of which I am ashamed.

I sent her to her room for her safety and my sanity, cleaned up the mess, and marched upstairs for a stern discussion about why she got in trouble and what the consequences were. She cried, and begged me for a hug.

I hugged her, but I confess: I didn’t want to.

The Poo is a trial these days. She is so mouthy and defiant, and she is acting out in ways I didn’t anticipate. She tells me off regularly, and yesterday she even behaved badly at her beloved gym school, a place where she usually gallops around for an hour with a huge smile, and gets a glowing report from her teachers.

Instead, I interfered in the class three times (frowned on at this institution) to discipline her. I had to. She needs limits and as hard as it is for me emotionally, I know intellectually that if I am soft on her now because I feel guilty about displacing her as an only child, she will channel that strong personality for evil and not good.

After we got home from her class, Shaggy commenced screaming in a most scary way for at least 90 minutes, causing me to give up a precious appointment with the car-seat safety people.

Two-thirty yesterday afternoon found me holding a naked, screaming baby, crying myself and rocking in the nursery glilder. The Poo wandered upstairs and watched me from the doorway, pie-eyed and nervous.

“Mommy,” she said, “why are you talkin’ sad to me?”

“Mommy is tired, baby girl, and I am sad,” I replied, wiping my face.

She approached me warily, and put one small hand on my arm. “But why, Mommy? Why are you sad?”

“Mommy isn’t being a very good mommy this week, and I feel sad that your brother is crying so hard and that you were such a naughty girl this week,” I told her, my honesty a product of exhaustion and not knowing what else to say. “I’m not doing a good job.”

“Oh,” my daughter said. She took her hand away and stood there quietly for a few minutes, and then we both heard Mr. C walk in the door. I’d called him earlier to tell him we would not be picking him up to do the car-seat thing, and his concern prompted him to leave work early.

He came in, took The Poo downstairs, and left me cuddling a finally-quiet Shaggy, whose wails stopped abruptly and for what reason I could not tell you.

I spent the remaining afternoon hours huddled on my bed with the sleeping boy, alternately crying and wishing I could turn back the clock.

I love Shaggy, but he isn’t an easy baby. I love my daughter, but her strengths can also be a detriment to her progress and my mental health. Yesterday all I wanted to do was spin the hour hand until it was 1992, and I walked down Newbury Street in Boston, my biggest worries a term paper and what to wear the next day.

I am failing at this. Failing in ways I couldn’t have anticipated. Failing in ways that make me want to shut the door on all of them and cry into the wee hours of the morning. Failing epically.

Failing was fine when I was experimenting with my life, moving through the days and nights unfettered and responsible only for myself.

Now I am responsible not only for the care and feeding of these small, helpless humans, I am responsible for delivering them to the rest of the world as able, kind, thoughtful and productive citizens.

This week I am coming up short, and all I can do is hope that the next day is better than the last.

This is so hard.