The crummy spring morning

Forgive me...this post will be rambling.  This morning I'm just feeling very bleah.  For two mornings this week, my younger daughter played donkey.  She wasn't getting dressed.  She wasn't putting on shoes.  She wasn't brushing teeth.  She dug in her sweet little heels and did a full refusal on getting ready for school.

I wish, so very much, that I had some infinite supply of patience and great, logical tools to deal with such bouts of resistance.  Instead, I got from asking, to instructing, to insisting, to demanding, to yelling, to feeling like I want to cry.  Mornings should be filled with a gentleness and soft voices.  It's my time to get my girls ready to start their day over at the big elementary school.  It's a time I am protective of and I HATE it when it goes badly. 

My husband took the girls to school and I insisted that he walk our younger daughter in.  It breaks my heart to send her out of the car with a big, red, crying face.  I stayed behind listing all of my failures.  Why do moms do this?  I should get her up earlier so there's less of a time crunch.  There was an issue of one last piece of homework that needed to get done.  I shouldn't have let that happen.  She was tired because she went to bed a little late.  My fault. 

Two of my friends are teachers and they said this is the time of year they dread.  The kids have spring fever.  They're ready for summer.  Consistently behavior declines and frustration rises.  Maybe that's what we're experiencing.  In fact, my older daughter is having issues on the playground for the first time. 

As the weather warms and afternoons stay lighter longer, the tendency is to relax.  Instead, I believe I should get more structured just to hold this ship together through our remaining weeks of school.   Early bedtimes, early rises, all homework done immediately following school, outfits picked out the evening before for the next day...  At least when we have another crummy morning I'll feel like I did everything I could to prevent it.  Hmph.  I can only hope my little cherub is having a good day and I'm the only one sitting around with a heavy heart.

The poignant words of another drowning mom

A friend of mine posted a link to this blog post from another mom, renouncing a version of my hero, Wonder Woman.  Can you believe?  She can't get stuff done.  Work suffers.  Kids suffer.  The household suffers.  Hubby suffers.  She suffers.  There aren't enough hours in the day.  If I could be so bold as to paraphrase, she functions at a percentage lower than ideal.  Nothing is as good as she knows she can do.  She feels like a failure.  I have two thoughts for the author.

1.  Honey, I can relate.

2.  Brava for eloquently puking it all out in a way that makes sense.

My circumstances and details aren't exactly the same, but I end many days with guilt and regret for missing the mark on any given task.  I should have put down the computer and engaged with the kids more.  I should have worked more to hit a deadline.  I should have stopped both of those things so that I could have cleaned the house.  I should have come to bed earlier so that I could "spend time" with hubby.  And a day that left me feeling completely spent from spinning my wheels from dawn to...well, almost dawn again, I don't think about the accomplishment.  I dwell on what didn't happen.

So what's the solution?

Work less?  Oddly, I'm about to get that wish.  And what have I done instead of relishing it?  Started my own website and that will, hopefully, grow to a profession.  Gee, that sounds like a schedule-clearer.  *insert eye roll here*

Hire someone to do some of this work (cooking, cleaning, errands) for me?  I'm cheap and that'll never happen.

Spend less time with my family in hopes of getting other things done?  Not an option.

I hang a lot of faith that getting myself organized, both in the literal sense of decluttering our home and my brain by working on meal plans, for example.  The irony is that those things take time.

I usually like to wrap up my posts on something funny or an upnote, and in that tradition, I think I'm going to commit to some baby steps.  I'm guilty of getting overwhelmed and making mountains out of mole hills.  Seriously...instead of doing two loads of laundry a day (the mole hill), I wait until there are nine loads to do (Mt. Washmore) and I'm weighed down by the thought of completing that task. 

Thank you to Jessica for her poignant words that really made me take ten minutes and think this through today.  I needed that!  Today, Wonder Woman can move over.  You're my hero.  <3