I wonder if people who watch me parenting recently think I hate being a mom.
That was my thought rolling in to this week. (Just what every parent needs on a Monday, right?)
Backstory: We spent the weekend camping with my family and three little ones in the classic 600% August humidity. In true camping tradition, a loud and unexpected thunderstorm rolled in around 3 a.m. on our first night despite the 0% chance of rain forecasted, so no one got any sleep. Within 24 hours of arriving at the campsite, the kids were wild with excitement and exhaustion.
This stage of parenting is a challenging in the best of circumstances. The two year old is yearning for independence, which for her means vanishing from sight at every available opportunity and ignoring any suggestions, requests, or demands from her parents intended to keep her safe. The four year old at least has the decency to tell us “NO” when we ask her to do something, rather than just blatantly ignoring us. And the nine year old, while blessedly more trustworthy with her independence, still brings a whole range of emotions and requests that require energy to address. All this is in the best of circumstances.
Camping this weekend was not the best of circumstances, and before long I felt like a frustrated, exasperated, frazzled, exhausted mess.
Then, naturally, I felt guilty about being a frustrated, exasperated, frazzled, exhausted mess.
I know I’m supposed to be enjoying these moments. I don’t want my kids to look back and remember mama being a crabby Grinch.
But dang, you guys. Sometimes it feels impossible—like my only choices are to chill out and let my children run wild, destroying everything in their path including themselves and each other OR be the mama that tries to encourage reasonable behavior. It seems like an obvious choice, but then when the first attempts at encouragement of reasonable behavior are ignored or rejected, suddenly I’m escalating into the crabby lecturing controlling parent. For the life of me, I can’t find the middle ground.
I don’t want to spend more time being frustrated than I spend being grateful. I don’t want to spend more moments lecturing my kids than I spend enjoying them.
But most of all, I don’t want the moments of frustration and lecturing to be what defines me as a parent.
Because the truth is, even in the most frustrating and exhausting of moments, I wouldn’t trade this for the world.
Yes, this stage is hard. Yes, it wears me out daily and no, I’m not always the best version of myself that I’d like to be. From the outside, the exhaustion and frustration might seem more obvious than the love and gratitude sometimes.
But when both are stacked on either side of the scale, the love and gratitude win every time. Every time.
I love these kids and this life we have built more than I’ve ever loved anything in my life. I yearn for a break from the stress of it and then my heart breaks with missing them literally the minute I walk out the door. They push me to the limits of insanity and then wrap their tiny arms around my neck and say, “I love you, mama” and melt my heart right down into a puddle. Sometimes I sit and watch my these little people that I get the privilege of being a mama to and I’m overcome with awe because I literally can’t wrap my head or heart around the magnitude of this blessing.
Parenting is hard and I’m an imperfect human. Striving to never get frustrated or exasperated or frazzled or exhausted seems like an unrealistic goal. And I don’t think hiding or burying the feelings is necessarily a solution either. So I guess the fact is that sometimes I will be the frustrated, exasperated, frazzled, exhausted parent.
But that doesn’t mean I won’t be loving every minute of it.