Today Was a Bad Day

Today was a bad day. You know the kind of day I’m talking about. Maybe you had one today, too. It wasn’t bad because of a natural disaster or because a loved one received a terrible diagnosis. It was a bad day—just because.

First, the two-year old woke up and started screaming for no reason. At least not for a reason that I could determine. Nothing was right, and NO she did NOT want that waffle that I made her for breakfast. How dare I.

Then the baby turned on me. The sweet one. The stable child. The daughter that’s going to choose our nursing home one day. She had enough of playing second fiddle to big sister and wanted to be held—and held by no one but me. But it didn’t matter that Daddy couldn’t hold her, because he had to go to work anyway, and then I was left alone. The day stretched before me, and I looked at the clock every 5 minutes.

“I can’t believe it’s only 8:00 am.”

“I can’t believe it’s not nap time yet.”

“How am I going to get through today?”

“Is it too early to put a movie on?”

“It’s still only 8:15 am…”

These days bring out the worst in me. When I am pinned down by two tiny humans and can’t do so much as go to bathroom, I start looking around at everything else that’s not getting done. I remember that I made the choice to stay home, which sometimes feels a little stifling. And that’s when the voices in the back of my mind start speaking up.

“You don’t deserve to sit down and drink that coffee. Look at your laundry basket. Have you seen your closets? And you are so fat. You don’t need breakfast.”

This is how my day went with no relief. One kid would calm down, and the other would start screaming again. One would get fed, and then the other decided they were starving. I let the distraught 6 month old lie on my chest to calm her down, which worked after 30 minutes, and then I felt some unidentified liquid that came out of my baby run down my chest and between my boobs. I’m still not sure what that was. Does it matter? I cleaned it with a baby wipe and forgot about it.

That toddler I mentioned earlier? She has a very annoying habit of mimicking me when she’s upset. I’m equally as bothered by how bratty she sounds and how she reflects back my own character flaws. How can I explain that I can talk like that, but she can’t? Is it wrong that I want someone to acknowledge that I cleaned her poop off the floor twice today? Because she didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered.

At some point during these days is when the darkest part of my heart opens up. The part that I’m most ashamed of. The part that says “What would happen if the next time you said you were running errands, you just kept driving? How long before people realized you were trying to escape?” If I’m the only parent that’s ever thought this, then I will take my place as the World’s Worst Mom. But I don’t think that I am. In fact, I know that I’m not. The part that makes me the most disgusted with myself about this reprehensible thought is that I don’t have a bad life. I have a really, really good life. What am I escaping from exactly? My warm home? My supportive husband? My healthy children?

But of course I would never leave. I wouldn’t be able to go far from those little ones who always smell just a little like peanut butter. I will take the good with the bad and do it all over tomorrow. I am, after all, their biggest fan. I love them even on the really bad days, when there are tears and spit up and fifty time-outs. If I am not their cheerleader, than who? I will be there, day after never-ending day, and if they ever need me to, I will fight for them.

Oh, how I would fight.