Heather says:
For those that don’t know, I have three very young children. This equates to the occasional no good, very bad day. Today I mistakenly assumed I could hurry into the grocery store with the kids, grab one item, pay, and leave with my sanity intact. Not only did a complete stranger end up holding the baby while I dealt with the flailing two year old in the check-out. Additionally some man in the parking lot gave me the evil eye as I stood outside of my car rocking the crying baby while the two year old pitched an emmy award winning fit in his carseat.
We all have bad days. Most aren’t bad due to a tragedy, but rather an accumulation of ordinarily petty occurences that grow and invite all their friends. Days like today aren’t always predictable, but some, if you are female or in a relationship with one, tend to be somewhat forseeable. These are the days that wear you down and make you wonder why bother. The next time you have a day like mine take a moment and instead of ticking off each aggravation try to count what was accomplished, no matter how small, in spite of the frustration.
Somehow I still managed to put dinner on the table and take the kids for a walk afterward.
How was your day?
Oh I LIKE this post: true stories! I like your perspective, Heather!
My day was OK. But all my days recently are only OK; I’m struggling through my first trimester of pregnancy with my two year old. I feel pretty crappy and I’m resting as I should, which means my house is chaos and I’m not puttering in projects. I just give myself permission to lie on the sofa and read when I can. I’m sure that sounds heavenly to some busy mommies, but I’m looking forward to feeling good again!
If I’m feeling sick in the morning or having one of those days, I ask DH to give me a half hour. I take a super hot shower, blow out my hair, put on some light make up and dress up but comfortably. It makes a huge difference in how I present myself to the world. I’m a more ‘professional’ Mommy when I’ve got my game on. Still snuggly and playful, but not so easily stressed/surprised.
When in doubt- I know I’m out of the way but I’m two minutes from Publix and despite the drive it would probably save you time to drop them off for ten minutes.
If it’s any consolation I broke down crying the other day because I refuse to take the kids shopping any more (It’s literally a 30pt jump in my bp, no kidding, the store has a cuff, I check!), and we had no food in the house and I was HUNGRY. I got dinner out and a whole evening to myself, not just grocery time. nice.
Bless your heart….I’m a grandma now …. so those days are behind me but I always try to help a struggling mom if I see one in the store …sometimes by simply smiling or trying to distract a crying child with a quick peek-a-boo. If people give you “the Look” it is their loss…they obviously don’t know the joys or the trials of shopping with children…God’s blessing to you…Pam, South Bend
So true! My morning was pretty awesome. My afternoon was not so great- My 4 year old had a huge public throw down that included kicking me and another person standing by- so not cool. BUT I got a lot done today, spent some extra snuggle time with my 3 year old and overall had a great day…
Worse then yours, but Thanks for the post. It helped me put a few nice things about the day into the front of the bad things. You rock 🙂
Almost as bad as yours. We took J to the state fair today and he was fairly well behaved until dinner time.
When I took him out of his stroller, he began to have the mother of all meltdowns, which is unusual for him. Usually he saves that kind of drama for a more private venue.
Neither I nor B could figure out what was wrong with him. He didn’t want to eat, didn’t want his chocolate milk (which is REALLY unusual), didn’t want to be held, just screamed and cried so hard he was shaking.
I took him to the bathroom, thinking a potty break was in order but he wouldn’t go pee and his PullUp wasn’t really wet. I changed him anyway, thinking this might somehow fix the problem. It didn’t.
B takes him to the bathroom, strips him down (in the privacy of a stall, I assume) and notices two unusual bulges in his lower abdomen. O.O Then he also notices something else..his acorns are not in their er..bag. O.O
B massages said acorns BACK into place, which allows J to pee a bucket, thus relieving whatever pain he’d been in. He stopped crying, ate his hotdog (and part of mine!), drank the entire bottle of milk and some watered down Sprite. From there on out, everything was groovy. We couldn’t figure out HOW his acorns got shoved up in there for the life of us, but thankfully B was able to correct the problem. When he told me what had been wrong with J, I was like O.O! No wonder he was having such a melt down! Poor guy…