Preschooler Pushes Mother to the Brink

Yesterday, I woke up on the couch, where I sought refuge from the noise wafting through the paper thin wall that separates me from my children at night. Tossing, turning, coughs, sneezing, a thin sleepy cry: all of these things keep me in a state of maternal alertness. After I got up and sucked down some coffee, I cleaned for a while, got dressed and headed to work. Seven hours later, I arrive home at 7 pm, a.k.a. bedtime. Though my husband has made a valient effort to get the house cleaned up, the children have not eaten dinner and are nowhere near ready for bed. I felt my spirits sinking, but they absolutely went into free fall when he asked me what's for dinner.

I slapped together two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a hard boiled egg. H1, the three year old, ate half a sandwich and declared the egg inedible due to the hazy green ring around the yolk. H2, the one year old, ate only the jelly half of the sandwich and fed the rest to the dog. Husband, sensing my frustration, began to cook pasta even though, when I suggested it earlier, he claimed to have eaten that for lunch.

H1 spent copious amounts of time brushing her teeth only to come out and say she had to finish her sandwich. Bedtime is a tiresom thing. H1 cannot go to bed without water, teddy, Maisy, care bear, snake, jaguar and, of course, cow. Nor csn she sleep without the blanket laid in a perfect square and a nice pile of books nearby should she get bored. Of course, we have to read one book and tell a story and if this is not all done perfectly she is mad.

This is why I can't stand kids; they are mad all. of. the. time. Can I eat this? No. That’s a bug. Mad. Can I play with this? No. That's a knife. Mad. Can you help me do this? No. You are dipping your books in the toilet. Mad. Never do I hear, Good job getting that red hot out of my nose, Mommy, I was so stupid to put it in there. Instead I get “you’re hurting meeeee!”

Being a mother is the least rewarding thing I've ever done. People with children don't tell you this before you have kids. They want you to have kids because if you don't have kids and they are forced to witness you living a pleasant, unfettered, routine life free of clingy, drueling parasites, they will not like you anymore.

Now, before you call child protective services on me, I will say that I love my kids more than I have ever loved anything. I don't regret a day of my life since I've had them. But I miss, I really really miss my old life where I was responsible for just me and I could go days, weeks really, without someone being mad at me.

The flip side, maybe, is that children don't hold grudges. H1 disowns me several times a day just to return five minutes later with unprompted declarations of love. I'm not sure why it has to be this way, but it probably has something to do with a child's need to test boundries and their lack of a fully developed brain. It is also key to maternal brain drain, the condition whereby a woman's brain shrinks due to lack of use and she may do things like refer to herself as mommy in a room full of adults.

Yesterday's ledger

$20.96 on kitchen supplies of questionable necessity
$11.72 on a 6 pack of Guiness and Coke