Mommin’ Ain’t Easy. And I know you’re like, “duh Meg” because I’ve just said (and titled a whole blog post) around the most obvious thing in the world.
But let me explain. I’m writing this post on Saturday, and hours ago, things were not going so well over at our house. The early morning had been fine. Brandon and I both slept in (abandoning our usual 4/5 AM thing) til 6:30. After we got up and around, Brandon ran to Walmart and got groceries while I stayed home with our hooligans. Then B came home, and everything went south.
We needed to go to Target (because some things you just can’t get at Walmart), but Harlyn didn’t want to get ready, so she was already kind of in a funk. When she came in announcing she had to go potty, I jokingly started singing the Daniel Tiger song…”if you have to go potty, STOP, and go right away…” which apparently was a bad idea because Harlyn looked at me and said to stop singing–it was annoying.
And I wasn’t pleased. Around that time, Brandon came to the room and I was like, dude, our daughter just basically said I am annoying and not to sing. Brandon told her not to talk to me like that, and I thought maybe that would be the end of the story. NOT SO MUCH.
Remember how I said that Harlyn didn’t want to get ready? She was refusing to do anything and everything, talking back, and being a general pain. So we warned her multiple times that if she continued to talk back she’d have a toy taken away. When she kept on with her attitude, I went to her room, took a stuffed animal from her bed, and told her it was mine until at least tonight.
She lost her mind. She started screaming, crying, and letting me know how displeased she was with me by yelling “YOU ARE THE BADDEST MOMMY IN THE WORLD!” several times. I tried to remain calm, but inside I was just crushed.
During this whole saga, Maverick also decided to lose his mind and was running around crying too. Fun times.
Eventually, after she had been yelled at, and I had asked her how she’d feel if I ever told her she was the worst daughter in the world, something clicked in her. She was full of actual remorse. She started to cry and told me over and over how sorry she was and that she loved me so much, and I told her that of course I loved her too and I forgave her and it was all okay now.
Anyway. The point of my story is that being a mom is challenging and is not always the cuddles and laughs that social media makes us think it is. Being a mom can totally suck sometimes. Motherhood is hard.
If you’re a mom like me, that means you struggle with patience and feel like you yell more than most moms.
If you’re like me, you wonder sometimes how the other moms can stay at home with kids when you can barely manage the weekends WITH YOUR HUSBAND THERE.
If you’re like me, it feels so impossible sometimes that you almost ask your husband if he’ll call on Monday to schedule his vasectomy.
If you’re like me, your fragile mama heart will break into a million pieces when your 4 year old accuses you of being the BADDEST MOMMY IN THE WORLD because some days you really worry that you are.
Being a mom? It’s difficult and no one can tell you the right way to do it, because there’s not just one right way. Even if there was a right way, we’d fail at it. There’s days that we will feel totally incapable (like today for me). There are days we will scroll through Instagram and wish our mothering skills were like so-and-so’s or our kids were angels like what’s-her-face.
Listen, by the time we got to Target today, Harlyn and I were hand in hand. Because if there’s one thing I know about this little family of mine, it’s that we all realize how much grace we need from each other, so we give that same grace to each other.
