It started at 9 a.m.
The Fedex man had the audacity to ring the doorbell. The toddler, who usually ignores the doorbell, did not ignore the doorbell. Instead, she melted into a crying mess of temper tantrum.
That set the trend for the rest of the morning. She cried until I picked her up. And then she cried when I held her. Occasionally she took a short break to go check in with her toys. In fact, we even played cheerfully for a short spell with “Cinella” (Cinderella) and some of the other little people who were going for a “swim” in a cup.
But as soon as I got up to walk away, more meltdown.
For lunch she ate only crackers and refused everything else.
She napped (THANK GOD) and then clung to my leg while I got everyone loaded for gymnastics. While we waited for sister to finish class, she semi-contentedly threw her toys all over the floor. But as soon as we were back in the car, the whining began again. And by the time we got home it had progressed to a full blown fit once again.
At dinner, she refused all her food while cry-yelling for crackers. Which I refused to give her because it was basically all she had eaten all day.
She is persistent so this continued until she was a blotchy blubbering mess. At which point I handed her off to her dad and said, “HANDLE THIS I’M DONE.” In exactly the kind of exhausted exasperated tone that you would expect.
Even when she kept crying and reached for me, I walked away and let him take her.
I fed the fussing baby while listening to the toddler crying in the bath and crying through getting her pajamas on.
And the image of her sad cry for “crackers” and her tear soaked cheeks as she reached her little arms for me kept tugging at me.
I’ve been a parent long enough to know how much it sucks to end a day like this. Especially a rough day. I battle through and get them to bed and then as soon as they are sleeping peacefully my heart starts to break over the time I “lost” with them (for lack of a better way to describe it). I’ve spent many a night crying into a glass of wine after bedtime for this exact reason. The phrase “Never go to bed angry,” always seemed a little cliche to me when it came to relationship advice. But when it comes to parenting? It’s a necessary law.
Which is why, even though I spent a good part of the day with the F-word flashing through my brain because of this child, I couldn’t stand the idea of ending our day like that. So I passed off the baby to her dad, took a sippy cup of milk and a tube of crackers, and scooped her up into the rocking chair. I snuggled her and ran my fingers through her hair and kissed her sweet toddler cheeks while she happily munched her crackers and drank her milk.
And then I held her for just a little longer than usual before I tucked her in to bed.
And then I came downstairs and snuggled with the six year old while her post-bath hair left a wet spot on my shoulder. And after she was tucked in, I held a fussy, gassy baby on my lap until she fell sound asleep.
And when it was all said and done, it was still everything I could do not to burst into tears.
These days are hard on a mama’s soul.
It’s hard to see our kids struggle. It’s hard to wonder what the right way to handle it is. Do I snuggle her all day because she so obviously needs me? Or is there a better way to handle her temper tantrums? Do I send her to bed with no supper when she refuses to eat or do I feed her crackers for the third meal in a row?
I don’t know the answers. I just know that I’m grateful they have no idea how many times I said the f-word in my head today.
And more importantly, I’m grateful that even on the days when I feel like I’m failing hard at this parenting thing, at least I know that the last thing they felt before they fell asleep was my arms around them.