Send Booze.

This morning was one of those mornings that made me want to resign my post as mom and flee the house in my pajamas.  In fact, I believe I texted Tony just that: “I resign as mom.  Find someone else for your children to scream at for an hour each morning.”

 

Jamie woke mere minutes after I hauled my tired-from-children-coughing-all-night-despite-liberal-doses-of-ibuprofen butt out of bed and towed the garbage out to the curb.  Garbage truck day is the highlight of Jamie’s week and I am used to nagging Tony about putting the can out on Wednesday nights, but last night I forgot.  This meant that only the kitchen garbage got out to the can in time and the garbage in the rest of the house is still overflowing its receptacles, just waiting for a curious toddler to come along and scoop out interesting items to feed to the dog.  Jamie was clingy and uninterested in eating his breakfast sitting anywhere other than my lap, so my coffee cup had to start out half-full to avoid spilling when he flipped up the newspaper as I was reading it (yeah, he’s a super seatmate).  He screamed every time I tried to put him down. 

 

Charles woke up groggy and quickly became cranky after changing his mind six times about what he wanted for breakfast (Eggs!  Mac n cheese!  Toast!).  But the real fun came when I asked him to share a bite of his toast with Jamie while I made him more.  Seems reasonable, right?  I mean, there was a whole loaf of bread, no one was going to go hungry there.  One tiny bite out of two entire pieces.  Charles’s temper shot through the roof and before I knew it, he was throwing buttered toast and plates around the house, kicking at me and screaming as I hauled him upstairs to take a time out.

 

Jamie refused to let go of me for another half hour.  I barely managed to get dressed today, despite getting up well before dawn.  It’s a miracle we all got out the door, and perhaps a bigger miracle that we all made it out alive.

 

These kids, they just wear me down, you know?  Out of 24 hours in a day, they spend 7 in preschool, 11ish sleeping (or at least in bed), and probably 3 trying to see how much steam they can get to pour out of my ears.  There is nothing that fixes this, nothing that makes this better.  There is no pattern, no habit I can change to improve my children’s behavior, no amount of level-headedness or excitement or temper on my part that will entice them to act like children instead of demons (I have tried everything, short of actually resigning and finding them a more capable mother).  There is only slogging forward, hoping the light at the end of the tunnel is around the next bend. 

 

I’m starting to think this tunnel of ours might, in fact, be an endless mineshaft.