Bad Mom

Started this a few weeks ago, but let's just pretend it was this week.  I need to preface this post by saying I am not looking to be consoled.  I don't want to hear that I'm doing fine.  Because to be honest, that will probably make me feel worse about how I acted.  

On Monday I was not a good mom.  Not that I consider myself a great mom on any given day, but most days I would call myself at least a good mom.  Monday was not one of those days.

Allow me to set the scene:

We had a great day Saturday.  We went to visit my brother who lives near Reading, got some lunch, went to a corn maze.  Evelyn was a little out of sorts because she was a bit uncomfortable not having pooped since Thursday morning (for those of you who have been around this blog for a while, haven't you missed the posts about poop???).  By Sunday, though, things were pretty rough at the Lane house.  Both girls had had really bad sleep nights between the lack of poop and teeth.

When Sunday evening rolled around, poor Evelyn was a hot little mess.  It was just painful to watch her hunch over.  We had given her prune juice, lots of fruit, and anything we could find with a lot of fiber.  We had dinner at my parents' and it was a sight to see because we were all doing everything we could to try to get her to poop.  We were making up these ridiculous dances trying to get her to push things down.  And finally before bed she pooped twice.

Monday morning she pooped again...and I mean pooped!  Things were good.  She seemed to be back to normal.  Apparently she wasn't done though, because she went three more times at school.  And this mom of the year forgot the extra diapers on the counter.  Ugh.  When I picked her up I grabbed the few out of the diaper bag and left them in case I forgot again.

When we got home we had lunch and I put both girls down for a nap and hopped in the shower.  When I got up, Evelyn had decided to crawl into the crib and play with her sister.  Back to their respected beds, and things got quiet for 20 minutes.  Vivian started fussing and the next thing I knew Evelyn was slamming open her door and running in to see her sister.  Naps were not going to happen.
 
The problem is that if a nap doesn't happen, Evelyn is a hot mess.  I kept trying to get her interested in things to do, but she was just being a pill.  Let's make an octopus (I had been on Pinterest the night before...)!  Got out the paint...that lasted 3 minutes.  Let's find letters on the magnet board!  NO!  Let's pretend to be animals!  Hop like a kangaroo!  NO!  Let's read a book!  Princesses!  NO!  WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?!?!?!?!  I was so mad at myself that we have been implementing a "TV Turnoff" right now because the watching has just been getting a little out of hand.  All I wanted was to put in a movie and be done with it.  

And with every game I tried to get her interested in that she just brushed aside I got more mad that she wouldn't just take a nap because obviously she needed one.  I was exhausted, she was exhausted, Vivian was exhausted, but no one was napping.  And then she was whining and yelling, so I started whining and yelling.  I was doing everything that I know I shouldn't do.

And I was watching the clock because at about 4:00 my in-laws were due to arrive.  Mommom and Poppop would fix this.  And that was almost equally frustrating because the minute they walked in the door, she would be a different child.  And she was.

She was a lovely child for Mommom, and then was even relatively normal when we went to get dinner.  And I just fumed on the inside because of the little pain in the butt she had been for me all afternoon and for the bad mom I had been in trying to deal with it.

Then she pooped again.  And I reached into the diaper bag...for the diapers that weren't there anymore.  UUUUUUGGGHHH.  It was at that moment that I washed my hands of the day.

And you know, for every day that is a mom fail, there is a mom win because the next morning Evelyn woke up and wanted to finish the octopus I had tried to get her to make with me, and we did.  And it was adorable.  And then she ripped it apart before I could take a picture.