sometimes i suck at this

Today was one of the most difficult days of parenting I have ever had. It pales in comparison to yesterday, which was an absolute flop. My kids are sick. Jack & Marlowe are completely miserable with coughing and sneezing and have faucets of snot running down their faces. I woke up at 6am after having nursed Kit 4 times in the night, to them starting their day off with tears and whining. Marlowe had crawled into Jacks bed and was pushing against his legs with her head. And he just whined at her. So it began. 

Somehow we made brownies this morning. I am smart enough to buy 2 cake mixes at the store for cooking projects now. But other than that and some pretty nice water colors… it was 8 time outs for Marlowe before noon, and me screaming like only Fae Dunnaway can. And nap was not the usual “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” sung to them and tucked in, it was more like “STOP WHINING!!!”, “ENOUGH” , “GOOD NIGHT” and a slam of the door. Not my best parenting morning, a total disaster actually. But the kids were non stop demanding, whining and horrible to each other all morning. I just yelled. That is something I try not to do, but all coping went out the window because on top of it Kit is sick and was crying a lot and I still have the tail end of this stomach flu and have what feels like rocks rolling around in my belly. Still, Jack & Marlowe are only two and so beautiful. Even when Jack gets that smirk on his face while he is just touching the thing with his finger that I am telling him not to touch, he is beautiful. I always feel guilty after yelling into their innocent faces. I know that I am not the only mother that reaches a breaking point, we are human after all. My neighbor stoped me out in front of my house the other day to talk my ear off about how she feels like all she does is yell at her teenager, and doesn’t feel like it helps at all. And I have read many people post about reaching the end of ones rope with toddlers on the Brooklyn parents of twins forum I belong to. Some people argue that you can’t pretend that you are not angry when you are, and that you should show how you really feel within a certain limits, and that your kids should definately know when you have reaced your limit. I can see how this can be true. But what if you showing your anger does nothing but fuel the fire, and create an atmosphere of tension and negativity? What if all the anger in the world wouldn’t change my kids behavior? What if you wake up at that limit and stay there pretty much the whole time if there is never an oportunity to come down? 

I dunno’ this moning I took myself out of the picture a couple of times and walked into the other room and tried to calm down. And it helped a little. But not much. There was the constant feeling of being rushed. Jack and Marlowe needed to be supervised with everything or they would whine or hit eah other. They wanted this or that or shoved books in my face when I was holding the baby, or wanted to play with a different toy when we werent finished cleaning up the old one. The stress can get pretty high. Usually I am pretty capable of handleing all three kids on my own. I do what I can to show my physical boundries. “Do not put that book in my face.”, and my boundries of space and time “No, I can not read that book to you now, I need to cook breakfast now.” But Jack can whine and repeat his asking until you are ready to go berzerk. I am also pretty good about trying to deescilate things and remove one kid from the bad behavior situation and tak to them. But it isn’t always possible to do this, especially now with a baby in my arms. Its easy to get frazzled. I get nothing done but play referee and be the person who isn’t entertaining them fast enough, with Kit’s cry going up my spine. This morning I thought I handled it very badly. Even though I went over the rules with them first thing “If you hit, punch, push, bite, or kick, you get a time out.” (ding!, ding!, ding!), it still ended up with me yelling and loosing it.

What I didn’t realise was that my kids are sick and acting unusually irritable, and so was I. Together we were a mess. Tom came home from work about 1pm thank God. I was nursing Kit in bed while the twins slept, and I talked to him about  the morning and we discussed what we should do differently. When the twins woke up things were okay for about a half an hour when it hit the fan again. We decided that we needed to get out of the house, rain or not. Thats when Marlowe had a kniption. A full on freak out lasting about 15 minutes. We finally calmed her down but she was a disaster and everything was followed by tears. Getting her shoes on took forever. Tom and I stood in front of the house looking haggared. I put the baby in the snuggli and opened my umbrella. Tom put the rain cover on the stroller and we decided we would rather get soaked  than spend one more minute in the house with stir crazy and sick toddlers. We were able to distract them with different things we saw along the way. Their eyes were all red and puffy in the sun but the clouds loomed ominously behind us as the raindrops began to get closer together chasing us down the sidewalk. We walked south about 5 blocks and ducked into Wallgreens when it started to pour. We putzed around there like the desperate parents that we were. We danced at the musical cards and played with dog toys and bounced balls in the isles. Kit didn’t find the shampoos very interesting and chose to fall asleep instead. Our basket filled up with all kinds of essentials. Two new packs of primary color play-doh, two purple whales for the bath tub, two bubble-making animals, two rubbery spiney water blobs with eyes, some new matchbox cars, a plastic bat and ball, a huge bubble wand, a photography book about animal friends, two boxes of tissues, some children’s Tylenol. We racked up a lot of stuff, and when the rain stopped we stood in line and piled all the crap on the check-out counter, catching annoyed glances from the people in line behind us tapping their toes holding their nasal spray and hair gel. In front of the store we busted open what we could and made bubbles stick all over the dripping wet cars nearby. We walked home and stopped and showed the kids flowers, and cats and dogs and lawn statues. A lady on her porch commented that I was brave to have another after the two. When we got home it was an hour before their bed time, we had been gone three hours. I was so glad that Tom had come home, I had planned to make this trek by myself today, it would have been rough. He made me feel better by saying that it wasn’t just me, that they were in particularly horrible moods and that we had made the best of it.

Its hard to see it when you are in it. I love being a mom to these guys, but it gets you down when you feel that nothing you are doing is working to improve their behavior. I have to remember that I am the adult here, and that as my Grandmother used to say “this too shall pass”. And although my initial reaction may be the most genuine, it won’t necesarrily get me what I want in the long run. I don’t want to be “scary Mom”. So yelling at them just makes me that. But I don’t want to coddle them and speak in that annoying sweet voice that parents often do. It comes accross as patronizing or disingenuous. Somewhere in between there is what I am going for. A stern direct voice that explains exactly what I expect and exactly what the consequences are. And I need to try and explain in advance what will get them in trouble and follow through with it every time. From what I understand, a toddler does not make the connection right away that a behavior is wrong. The consequences often have to be repeated. Maybe so, but how many times do I have to say “Don’t touch Daddy’s records!” before it sinks in? How many times does Marlowe have to get a time-out for biting? I am trying to keep them occupied positively and I try and help them use their “big words” instead of acting out. But its not always possible. I have to say that parenting toddler twins (and a  4 month old, and a teenager) is the hardest thing I have ever done. Hands down. I think because they are my children, and I want them to be respectful people. Its impossible to see if you are making any progress when you are deep in it without any outside perspective. Ru asked me the other day if I was bored being a stay at home Mom. I told her that I loved it, and that I did’nt have time to be bored.

Yeah, I do love it. And I get mad when mornings all go to shit and I can’t enjoy my kids like I wish that I can. They are amazing people and incredible fun. We are learning together I guess. So many people comment that I must be an expert at parenting at this point. I really am not an expert. I just wing it the best I can and I often get it wrong. Well, tomorrow is another day and another chance to do it better. One thing I have found that works well is that I give them a chance to do a “do over” when they mess up in the behavior department. I think it gives them a chance to have some control over an outcome. I think I need to extend that opportunity to myself. I would not want to do this day over again, but I would like to start tomorrow off with a deep breath and a chance to do the right thing for them.