I love my son a bunch. But nobody warned me that just about the time I started to get 8 hours of sleep again at night, a new, equally exhausting, stage would commence. The “active toddler” stage. The “won’t listen to no” stage. The “make Mommy a jungle gym” stage. If it’s forbidden my son is playing with it– toilets, miniblinds, pissed off cats, etc… When he is told “no” he yells and cries like I just beat him. There are days when I feel like I say nothing BUT “no” and hear nothing but screams in reply. I have to shut my windows lest the neighbors report me… or at least judge my mothering skills. Lacking Supernanny on speed dial, I pray often to the God of Motherly Patience. I have yet, however, to feel any divine intervention. This forces me to channel Helen Keller and feign deafness.
One particularly bad day, I almost stopped a pregnant woman in Wal-Mart to tell her not to go through with it. I wanted to throw myself at her feet and warn her. “Lady! Adoption is the answer! Take it from me!” I half hoped that doing so would result in my arrest and I would spend a few days in the sweet solitude of a prison cell.
I go into the office two days per week. It’s not a vacation or a day at the spa but it IS an oasis of adult chit chat and iTunes. (In case you are thinking that I was lying about loving my child, I want you to know that by the end of the work day I miss my son so much that I look at pictures of him… He looks so innocent in pictures…)
Last night, my son had a meltdown due to lack of napping. It was 4:40pm and he could not be consoled. There was a very intense battle between my hatred of late afternoon naps and the desire to make the lambs stop screaming. The silence of the lambs won and off my son went to his crib. I cleaned up the mess from my bleeding ears and sat down to read for a few minutes. One of the biggest lessons motherhood has taught me is that silence is golden.
But also golden is the garbled “I love you” I heard from my son’s lips yesterday. I just wished he didn’t normally communicate his love and regard with high-pitched shrieks and wails. Thems the breaks.
Deeply analytical. I marvel at motherhood.