Less than Perfect

I'm a mama, that is to say, I mom for a living. I consider myself (and am considered by others) to be a medium crunchy, peaceful-type, babywearing, breastfeeding, plastic-avoiding mom. I talk to my 2 1/2 year old and explain things to the best of my ability. I do not spank, I limit TV, and she didn't even taste refined sugar until she was a year old. I am a good mama.....but sometimes....

I LOSE MY SHIT!

Yup, sometimes I'm less than perfect and sometimes I even embarrass myself in front of my little girl. Like today, ah, today, a seemingly innocuous day that started out great! She even slept in until 7am, seven a.m.! That's two extra hours of sleep for both of us (sorry for the whole alarm clock, going to work at 6 a.m. thing hubby). That means it should've been a great day, we'd play with her new Christmas toys, and do clever art projects involving paper towel tubes and glitter, I might even get some housework done. Ah, and there's the rub, I over-envisioned the day.

Lesson Number 1 - Never over-envision the day, if you keep your expectations low, then you can't disappoint yourself, heck, it's probably best to assume you will get absolutely nothing worth-while done on any given day, 'cause then maybe you'll finally wipe the 6 month-old fingerprints off the TV screen so you can enjoy Glee during her nap, and you'll feel like a real go-getter.

So there we were, in the post-breakfast, this moment could go in any direction, void, and she chose to go sit in a cardboard box and cut up last year's calendar. Score! That meant I had exactly 37 minutes to clean the bathrooms and sweep the floor before she 'helped' me right back to where I started.

BAM! I got three bathrooms less-appalling than they were yesterday in 15 minutes, and I was on to the floors. BAM! Swept in 10 minutes...that meant I had a whole 12 minutes to mop...(man, hubby was going to be so impressed when he got home).

And this is where the whole thing fell apart. Mopping is a wildcard, for some reason, Little Girl is obessed with the mop, which means that as soon as she noticed what I was doing, my 12 minutes turned into 12 seconds and I was SOL. Only, I'd committed, I had spent the mental energy envisioning sparkling floors and damnit...it was going to happen. I don't need to bore you with the play by play, but let's just say that the whole thing ended in me screaming inhumanly to the heavens and her crumpled in a heap of tears and snot 3 feet away.

Lesson Number 2 - Get while the getting is good. Sure, the floor would look SO pretty without last week's grape jelly blob next to the dishwasher, but really at least you got the 3 lbs. of hair, dirt, and crumbs out from under the table.

This brings me, in the most roundabout of fashions, to my point. I can perform super-human feats of patience day-in and day out, I can explain what the bear is doing on every damn page of her bedtime story 40,000 times, I can even spend 30 minutes reminding her to push all the poo poos out, but sometimes....sometimes I just lose my shit.

And that's ok, kind of. It's ok in that I am a human being, and no matter how hard I try not to be, I am fallible. It is not ok in that I believe that aurally assaulting my child is only a scosh less horrible than physically assaulting her, I didn't call her names, or swear, or even direct my scream at her, but I did frighten her, and not in a helpful, get-that-picked-up-I-mean-business, kind of way, but in a way that broke her, and my hearts.

Lesson Number 3 - No matter how angry you are, the moment you lose control and see that little face scrunch up in fear and hurt, the angry is gone and you are just a jerk.

So, I scooped her up, and cuddled her in the rocking chair until she stopped crying, then I apologized, because I never want my little girl to think that anyone can behave that way towards her, and if she can't expect a certain level of kindness and respect from me, how can she learn to expect it from her peers or significant others. I apologized because I did wrong, and although it was difficult, I did not include an admonishment for her infuriating behavior, or a shifting of blame onto her for my bad choices.

I want her to learn that people get angry, they get frustrated, and sometimes they lose control, but she always has the right to be treated with decency. Just because she is my child does not give me carte blanche to treat her in any way I choose.

I believe as parents, we will screw up, and I know that it is impossible to be a perfect parent. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try awfully hard to do better, every day.

If only she'd always do exactly what I say, the moment I say it.

What do you do when you lose it with your little one?