Last night was Ben's weekly basketball league, which meant I had the
I've been working on the mantra of "set the bar low" for a while now, and it's helped my normally Type A personality take a backseat, and go with the flow a little more.
Well, usually it helps.
But sometimes my human nature gets the better of me.
Yesterday we had a great appointment at the GI specialist. Josh had put on enough weight for the doctor to give us reprieve for 6 months before the next visit. I couldn't have been happier or more relieved.
You'd think the news would have bolstered me enough to make it through the cold, snowy afternoon stuck inside with the two kids.
Not so much. I had been up late working the night before, and my oldest makes it her life's mission to wake me up promptly at 6:30 every morning. By the afternoon I was crabby and unmotivated.
4:00 rolled around and my daughter innocently asked, "Will the chili be ready soon?"
Crap. I totally meant to put that in the slow cooker as soon as we got home from the doctor.
I hadn't done anything about dinner, and with the clock ticking, I had to act quickly.
I threw together a few cans of beans, some canned tomatoes, carrots, and onions, making quick work of a "vegetarian chili". I put it on the stove and cranked up the heat. Within a few minutes the chili was bubbling, filling the air with a delicious fragrance, and while not quite the same as a slow-cooked chili, crisis had been averted.
Meal times are always some of the most stressful moments in my current life. Especially when I am flying solo. Around 4:00 my daughter starts whining, "I'm hunnnnngry! I'm thirrrrsty! I need FOOD!" as though she has been starved all day long and might drop dead if I don't feed her in that exact instant. My son, on the other hand, takes more physical measures to get his point across. As I am racing around the kitchen, trying to get the food cooked as quickly as possible, he wanders into the kitchen, intent on attaching himself to my legs, hanging on for dear life in his own sort of "sit in" making it clear he has no intentions of letting go until I feed him.
Is it any wonder that some nights I shred up deli meat with my fingers and toss some veggie sticks at them and call it dinner?
Last night was no different. The temporary glory I reveled in upon creating vegetarian chili at a moments notice was quickly overshadowed by the melodramatics of my children.
I spooned out the chili into their bowls. "I want the blue bowl!" my daughter screamed. I nodded. "WAIT! I WANT THE ORANGE BOWL!" Close my eyes. Deep breath. Put some chili in the orange bowl. "STOP! WAIT! I WANT THE PURPLE BOWL." Lord, have mercy on me.
Having dispensed the chili into the the appropriately colored bowls, I ushered both kids into the dining room. I hoisted my one year old, Josh, into his booster seat, strapped him in, and handed spoons to both kids as Abby settled herself next to Josh. Both kids dug in ravenously as I ran back into the kitchen to grab their drinks.
Suddenly, I heard a crash, and my son saying his most favorite words, "uh-oh."
I had been gone for .0002 seconds. Even before I walked back into the room I knew what had happened.
Lately my son has decided that it is way more fun to throw food than to eat food. And I don't mean just casually toss his bowl on the floor. Oh no. My son does everything with gusto. You build a block tower, he will run at it full speed, screaming as loud as he can and mow that whole tower down in two seconds. You give him a ball? He's not going to toss it back gently, he is going to windmill his arm five times, pull back as far as he can, and chuck it back at you full force. So when it comes to chucking his food, you can imagine how he might approach that.
I walked back into the room, breathing slowly, telling myself to just be calm. I walked into what looked like a crime scene. Red everywhere. Up the walls, on the floor, all over the table, all over my son's face. His arms look like he took a bath in the chili before throwing it. Beans were splattered in all directions.
I don't know how he did it. I didn't even give him that much in the bowl. AND I had rinsed off most of the tomato sauce prior to giving it to him. And yet he had managed to throw chili into the far corners of the earth.
The problem with 20 month olds is, it is very hard to discipline them. They are just starting to grasp language, and while they understand the concept of "no", the ability to regulate their impulses and practice self-control is sporadic at best.
So I grabbed the bowl, pointed to it, and said in a very
My son looked innocently up at me and said, "uh-oh."
I closed my eyes and took a minute to calm down.
Now, here's the tricky part about Josh. Normally, with another child, I might have just taken him away from the table and put him in a timeout, and said too bad you missed dinner for this bad behavior. But because of Josh's struggle with weight gain, every meal is really important. And often he throws food for the fun of it, even when he is still hungry.
I walked back into the kitchen to get him another bowl of food. I brought it back in, put it in front of him, and he started eating happily again. I surveyed the chili massacre that was still all over the room.
I wiped down the wall with a wet rag, scooped the beans into small piles on the floor, and wiped down the table as best as I could. However, I needed a broom to pick up the piles of beans and vegetables still on the floor.
I eyed the laundry room, where I keep the broom. It is about 10 feet away from the dining room. If I'm ambitious, I can get there in two huge leaps. (ok, I'm really short, maybe three leaps).
I looked back at my son. He was still shoveling food into his mouth, intent on eating his new bowl of chili. Then back at the laundry room. I could see the broom hanging there.
I decided it wasn't worth risking another disaster. So I pushed Josh's bowl of chili into the middle of the table. He screamed in protest, as I darted from the room to grab the broom.
It was at this point I made a critical error. I didn't tell Abby what I was doing.
I figured I would be out of sight for a split second and it wouldn't matter.
As I reached out my hand and clasped my fingers around the broom I heard "CRASH!" again from the dining room.
I walked back in.
Yup. He had done it again. Chili. Everywhere. Walls. Floor. Table. Furniture. Covered in chili.
Apparently, in the nanosecond it had taken me to get the broom, Abby, taking pity on her brother, had pushed his bowl of chili back to him. And Josh, I assume in protest to me taking it away from him, gave full vent to his feelings and threw the bowl hard enough for it to ricochet off the wall, the chair, and land on the other side of the room.
And that my friends is when I lost it. The calm, patient, forgiving mommy left the building.
I started screaming like I had gone and lost my mind. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!!! DO NOT THROW FOOD!!!!! BAD! BAD! BAD!!!!!!"
I yelled so loud and so long that both kids burst into tears, afraid of the monster that had taken over the body of their mother.
I grabbed Josh, who was covered in red, and literally undressed him down to his diaper right there in the dining room. I was so angry, I hauled him upstairs, dumped him into his crib, and left him there in the dark.
I came downstairs to find my very teary three year old who told me, "Mommy, you can't say those bad things. Don't yell at us."
I could hear my son yelling upstairs in his crib.
Sigh. I sat down, head in my hands.
I took a few minutes to sit quietly, to calm my racing heart and slow my fast breathing.
I slowly began cleaning up the room. Again. My daughter watched in silence.
After I was finished, I took her upstairs, got Josh out of his crib, and got them both into the bath. Josh was reluctant to let go of me. He was shaken up by how angry I had gotten and how loudly I had yelled.
I felt terrible.
As the two kids started to play in the bath, I saw their bodies relax. Soon they were both giggling, splashing each other, and slurping water from washcloths.
And just like that, the storm had passed.
Watching them play, and turn to me with big, wide smiles, hoping I was watching their antics, I realized how quickly they had forgiven me.
As I dried off my son, rubbing lotion into his skin before bed, dressing him in his warm fleece pajamas, I breathed in his smell and forgave him too.
I rocked him to sleep, watching his eyes flutter closed as he snuggled in close to me.
As I woke up this morning, I couldn't help but feel regret about last night. Mom guilt is a special kind of guilt. It defies logic, placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of the mother despite who else might have been involved, and is the hardest kind to shrug off.
It's also universal to all mothers.
I can't tell you how many mothers have talked to me since I started this blog. Sharing their own stories of failure, success, ups, and downs. A common thread with almost all of them? Mom guilt. The mother who tells me her daughter is struggling in school, and she wonders if it's because she hasn't spent enough quality time with her. The mom who wonders if her son has allergies because she stopped breastfeeding after only a few weeks. The mom who wonders if her daughter has self-esteem issues because she herself hasn't modeled enough self confidence.
Mom guilt. It's powerful. It can make you think that you are responsible for all of your child's struggles. And that if you aren't responsible for causing them, that you are definitely responsible for fixing them and preventing future hurts. If you aren't careful, it can hold you hostage and rob you of the joys of the crazy roller coaster called raising children.
I struggle with it as much as the next mom. And when I fail, I have a hard time forgiving myself.
I've found that the only antidote for it is grace. Grace for ourselves and grace for our children.
My son woke up this morning, laughing in his bed. I could hear him on the monitor, getting up, walking to one end of the crib, throwing himself down face first in a sort of free-fall, squealing in delight. I walked into his room, and he jumped up. His face broke into a grin upon seeing me and he yelled out gleefully, "MAMA!!!" He jumped into my arms, and nuzzled his face into my neck.
Grace.
One of my favorite movies growing up was Anne of Green Gables. In the movie Anne says, after a particularly awful day, "Tomorrow is always fresh. With no mistakes in it."
My children understand grace better than anyone I know. They give and receive it freely. They wake up each morning, hardly remembering yesterday, and ready to start over.
Squeezing my son into me this morning, I vowed to do the same. And to give myself grace, knowing that many failures lie ahead in this chapter of motherhood.
So moms, reading this, know this: Motherhood isn't about perfection. It isn't about how long or if you breastfeed, or if you've perfectly modeled self-confidence, or whether or not your kids eat shredded deli meat a few nights a week. We're all in this together. None of us perfect, and all of us need grace. Just keep loving on your kids. When they throw chili around the room TWICE in five minutes, you might totally blow a gasket. It's ok. Tell them you're sorry. Then forgive yourself. They will learn more from watching you do that than from anything else you could try and teach them.
And remember: Tomorrow is always fresh. With no mistakes in it. Yet....
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