The MamaTrip

My three year old is driving me crazy.

Overemotional.
Tattletale.
Crybaby.
Clingy.
Cheeky.
Sassy.

It's gone from the occasional sassy that's somewhat cute, to full-blown obnoxious. "CB, don't touch the sanitary napkin trashcan!" said in a theater bathroom elicits a melt-down of epic proportions. Simple requests for picking up after herself are met with deaf ears and cheeky glances (so you know she does hear you). Everything is a reason for her to melt-down. H took her chair, she doesn't WANT to pick up her room, R won't let her use the computer, she can't have more milk.

So, I went dictator on her tiny little person.

Not ACCEPTABLE! Not COOL! Not HAPPENING! Time OUT! No STORIES!

I heard echoes of my father's authoritarian approach and my mother's hysteria. And, after I put her to bed, I cried my eyes out from exhaustion and frustration at having to be a hard-case. It's the hardest part of parenting, I think. The part where you have to draw a hard line and then figure out your strategy and stay consistent despite exhaustion and wanting to just give in to get a little peace and quiet.

You want it to be effective without harming their burgeoning personalities. You want them to understand appropriate from inappropriate and differentiate between respect and disrespect without breaking their spirits.

And, in the process, sometimes this little person breaks your spirit and your heart all at once...

Then, in the morning, you go in to wake up this child, still bracing for terrific frustration, your shoulders standing sentry at your ears, your abdomen taut, body in battle formation.

What you find is an angel there, where the demon went to sleep. And the angel is loving and snuggly and kissing you all over the face, telling you she loves you. The angel is docile and sweet and simply gorgeous and your heart overflows, and the walls of frustration melt into rainbows like you were on some kind of massive acid trip.

And, that's how I'd sum up motherhood, at least today.

A really effed up acid trip... but it's happy acid...the kind you'd drop again next week.