Hey, How Did This Get So Hard All The Sudden?

OK, this parenting thing... I'm not even totally into it and so much of it just majorly sucks! Little G has both his good days and his bad. I hadn't really seen the bad so that makes for a pretty long honeymoon period. Just when I thought I had the exceptional child, the not so great G moves in for the weekend.

I set up a video for him and there was no sound. When I was attempting to fix it he screamed as if I had thrown him into the fire. My reaction to this monkey-shriek was to yell back. Mama came in and after determining he was not ready to calm down, gave him a swat. I felt awful. Like if I hadn't instinctively yelled back, he wouldn't have been punished. I took it much harder than he did. The apology was heart-wrenching, as he tearfully said "I'm sorry Eddie!" and collapsed against me in tears. Oy!

Beyond that, there were several wet pants accidents, general crankiness and I discovered after I took them home- he had written on the fabric part of my computer speakers with a pen. Aaagugh!!

This has brought up big issues for me. Kind of like therapy, it is hard to accept and I wasn't aware of it before. I've learned I'm a control freak when it comes to my environment. I've also learned when you have kids around, you can never become too attached to something because it can be broken or scribbled on, or covered in bodily fluids (anything from pee to snot to who-knows what). It's a hard lesson. Luckily, Hints from Heloise reminded me that hair spray will remove ink from fabric. The remnants of what looked like a website (www.something?) are now removed from my speaker, the office chair has been cleaned of pee, boogers removed from the roomie's comforter, and the house is back to normal.

Now how would I feel about a lifetime of this? I'm sure my answer will change depending on what has just broken, but I'm still in. Today.