Real Life

I felt like what I wrote about yesterday was incomplete, and then my mom confirmed it when she texted me this morning saying, "I just read your blog which made every high sound so awesome. That is how it at night when they go to sleep." Which is so true! I said yesterday that right now, I am living my dream life in all of the most important aspects. But that doesn't mean it's very fun all the time or that I'm doing a very good job. To prove it, I made a list all of the not-amazing parenting moments I've had over the last day and a half (that I can remember):

- Dane came out of his room during naptime yesterday to go potty. I heard him running the water for at least five minutes, supposedly washing his hands. We have been trying for MONTHS to get him to not waste water and to wash his hand quickly, but I've been trying to not make a big deal out of it. I finally told him to turn off the water and go back to his room. He said, "But I haven't washed my hands!" I got really mad and made him go back into his room without washing his hands at all. Then he screamed at me for ten minutes from his bed, and I went in and took all his books away, and he screamed some more. I ended up shutting myself in my room with the bathroom fan on so I couldn't hear him screaming at me.

- Dane has started being really stubborn about obeying us. Even about the most innocuous things. He'll say, "I'm not going to do that" when he doesn't want to obey. He's really matter-of-fact about it, but he sticks to his guns and won't listen to reason. Two examples:
Me: Dane, we're going to go to the park! Go get your shoes and socks on and go potty.
Dane: I'm not going to do that.
Or,
Me: These avocados are going bad. Let's have them for lunch today.
Dane: I'm not going to do that.
He's said this to me at least six times in the last day, and I get mad every single time.

- Dane pooped in his underwear at the park yesterday. I did actually manage to stay happy and nice with him, but it was still stressful figuring out how to deal with it and clean everything up and get home.

- Graham woke up at 3:45 am and stayed awake in his crib talking for the next HOUR. I went in there and rocked him and he still kept talking. I was so mad that he was awake for no good reason at that ridiculous hour and I sat there cursing angrily to myself. I ended up just shutting his door so that I couldn't hear him and so I could sleep. (At least I didn't take it out on him.)

- Graham screams his way through every meal. If he doesn't want the food in front of him, he screams and screams until you figure out what random food he does want or until you take him out. It is really hard to do breakfast with him because we usually just make him some baby oatmeal (with applesauce) and he spends the whole time trying to swat it away. Today he smacked the spoon and threw oatmeal all over the carpet. I was really annoyed.

- We went on a walk yesterday. Dane wouldn't stay in the stroller and Graham started screaming because he wanted to get out. Our walk got cut short.

- We went to two different parks yesterday. Both times Graham spent the whole time writhing and screeching and trying to crawl through the wood chips so he could put every dirty, choke-hazardy wood chip into his mouth. I was exhausted just having to wrangle him around the playground.

- As we were leaving the park yesterday, Dane refused to leave. He yelled, "NO!" really angrily and ran away (with about six other moms looking on). I told him I was leaving and walked away. He didn't believe me and didn't even care. Darn it. I eventually coaxed him to leave but he kept telling me he was mad at me. He started yelling at me in the car, "JUST DO MY BUCKLE! JUST DO IT!" and I snapped at him to wait, and that we don't ask for things like that. He sulked the whole way home.

- We Skyped with Tommy (who was on a business trip) while I was making dinner and Dane refused to actually talk to him. So I took the computer to the kitchen to talk to Tommy myself and Dane threw a fit.

- Last night Dane was pretending to be Scar from the Lion King and saying, "Long live the king!" and pushing Graham over. I yelled at him to stop. (He'd pushed or hugged too tightly or smothered Graham at least thirteen times earlier in the day.)

I don't write these down because I think I was a terrible mom or made a billion mistakes. I think I am pretty normal and I know it was a long day yesterday. I don't think I even did half bad, because there were other moments where I held my cool and averted a disaster that I don't even remember (because the only moments that stick out are the ones that went bad). Mostly I think it's just funny that all of these things happened in one day (or a day and a half) and that yesterday was still a pretty good day. Dane was definitely more tired and naughty than usual, which made me more grumpy than usual--we don't normally have quite so many fights and he's usually much more compliant. But still--at the end of the day, I sat down to write a blog post and I could only think about how beautiful and amazing my life is. Isn't that the magic of having little kids? Their offenses are so minor that we can forgive and forget them and still want to spend all (or at least most) of our time with them.

I said yesterday in my blog post that I'm happy every day. I don't mean that I'm happy all day. Because obviously, if you look at the list above, I am NOT. I am pretty grumpy a lot of the day. But I am happy for at least part of every day. It's hard not to be when that screaming, screeching baby finally stops screaming and lays his head on your shoulder to snuggle when you're putting him to bed. And when they're finally IN bed and I get time to myself to reflect on the day and rejuvenate. That is what makes it a dream life, in spite of all of these real-life moments. Thank goodness for that.