Honest Confessions of Motherhood

After my "time off" from my blog, I am so excited to rejoin my friend Julia at Work Wife Mom Life. (I can call her my friend now because we email and she knows where I work, isn't that enough?) Her Working Mommy Wednesday blog hop provides the exact kind of support and camraderie that I strive for in this blog. Before I continue with my post, I would humbly like to request that if you enjoy my blog, please click that little pretty Picket Fence button on the right and vote for me today. The moderators just did a reset and this is my chance to move up in the world and achieve Picket Fence Mom-Blog Domination!

As for my confessions about Motherhood, I only have one today, but it's a doozy. I get really stressed out by being the parent of a toddler. I snap at my husband, get frustrated at my son for, well, acting like a typical 14-month old who likes to bring me a new diaper when he knows he has pooped but then squirms away when I actually lie him down to change him. Dinnertime is never easy, and while some days, like Monday evening, I can remind myself to just take life as it is and enjoy every moment (instead of trying to rush into dinner when we got home, I spent a good 10 minutes on the kitchen floor with a nearly naked child who was laughing with nothing other than glee because he was putting a bowl on my head), most of the time I spend my whole weekday evening just tapping my foot impatiently at my husband while thinking of the next ten things I must do in an hour.

Halloween night was a fine example of how I get: dinner took longer than expected to cook, even though I was lucky enough to have my mom over to occupy Jacob while we got everything ready. The baby didn't eat well, I couldn't get everyone to sit down and start eating so we could get going, I barely ate my own food because I was anxious that there were already Trick or Treaters coming to our door and for some reason I had it in my head that we would be one of the first, I kept thinking about how we needed to hurry up and get Jacob re-dressed so we could go. The whole time, I swear my husband moved as swiftly as a moped on a superhighway, and before we even got out of the driveway I was yelling at him and rolling my eyes at my mom and saying ridiculous things like "How many times can I give him the same instructions?" or "How slow can HE MOVE?" I eventually calmed down, held my husband's hand, apologized for my frantic behavior, and enjoyed the event the way a family should.

I think the most pathetic part of this mom-freak-out mode is knowing that my grandmothers, mother-in-law, and mom had many, many more responsibilities and shouldered even more of the child-care burden than I ever will because the times have changed and my husband is expected to step in and parent right along with me. The guilt that hits me after one of my anxiety "episodes" is almost worse than the stress itself. I know this is a recurring theme in my blog, but I keep coming back to "how can I think this is so hard and let it get to me when I have it ten times easier than any of them did?"

That is my confession. I need a reminder that this is normal, that this phase passes just like clusterfeeding passed and just like 2AM wakings passed (well, for now, I know the molars are coming eventually), and that something that seems so stressful right now will seem small and insignificant in a few months. And I need a swift kick in the behind and someone telling me now and then "get it together girlfriend".

My mom did that last week. We were cleaning up after dinner at their house and I yelled at my dog to get out of the kitchen for the 14th time and muttered "I'm gonna blow a gasket."

Mom's reply? "I think you already did." Moms know just what to say at the right time, don't they?