Had a bad day...

When do the words “Shut up” start to mean anything?  Well, I’ll tell you it’s not at 18 months old…

Today started off somewhat crazy, both Colleen and I slept in.  She normally is up by 7:15 but today I had to wake her up at 8 to get her ready to go to Grammy’s house.  I didn’t have time to fix her breakfast or dry my hair and when my hair looks like crap it’s just a recipe for disaster for the rest of the day. 

While dropping Colleen off I remembered I was out of sugar at work for my coffee, so I filled a to-go cup at Mother’s and took it with me.  Half way to work I figured it was cool enough to drink it so I took a sip only to find out that the lid for the coffee cup was the wrong one and it spilled all over my lap – HOT!!!

Work was at least less of a headache – trying to get as much done as I can before I take off the rest of the week.  Due to Mark’s schedule change, he is working every day this week so rather then have to pay over $100 for childcare, I decided to use some vacation time and take off Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and use that time to get the house in order, perhaps do something fun with the kids (since Mark is out of school for the summer) and just relax. 

5:00 rolls around and mom dropped Colleen off to me at work and we headed to Kroger to get some food – which having to take the detour around town to get to the store should have put me off a few days, but due to my lack of planning there was nothing pulled out for dinner.  We get to the store and I saw one of the car grocery carts – you know the ones with the big buggy car on the front end of it to let the kids play while you shop, so rather than risk a repeat of the last grocery trip (of Colleen fussing the whole time because she wanted to get out of the cart and play) I got the car cart.  It was the last one and it was just my luck that it was the one without the seatbelt.  I took it anyway, hoping that Colleen would be a good girl since she LOVES her cars at the house.

By the time we got to Aisle 1, she was over the car and every time we stopped she would try to escape.  I found myself rushing to put the items in the cart so that we wouldn’t come to a full stop and allow her to get out.  Welllllll…that lasted about 5 minutes before she started to JUMP out of the moving car so she could run around the store despite the number of “stay in the car” commands.  When she almost took out the row of glass pickle jars I had enough and put her in the top buggy seat and belted her in.  I should have just cut the shopping trip short and left then but I was so frustrated at not finishing the shopping the last time that I was determined to get it all done. 

You know the kid in the store that is crying and screaming and you think to yourself “Why won’t that mother DO SOMETHING” – yep that was Colleen.  I didn’t know what to do.  I tried ignoring it, I tried reasoning with her, tried to tell her that if she would be good I’d get her some ice cream – nope, nothing worked.  Finally I gave up – I was so embarrassed – I knew what everyone in the store was thinking, cause I had thought it when it wasn’t my kid.  The whole time at checkout I was cursing Kroger for not having the stupid seat belt on the car cart.  To top off my shopping trip I ended up having to do two transactions because the cashier didn’t ring up my toilet paper.  He even asked if I still wanted it – yeah…that was one of the important items buddy…

Pushing the cart of half the groceries I intended to get back to the car I remembered I had failed to get the beach toys out of the trunk so I had virtually no space for the groceries – WONDERFUL!  I managed to get them all in the car, started the car, rolled the window down (so I wouldn’t accidently lock Colleen in the car again) and pushed the POS cart back where it belonged. 

Dinner – I REALLY wanted fried cube steak (which I never fry anything in the house).  I naively thought Colleen would let me cook dinner in peace – WRONG AGAIN.  Frying and holding toddler at the same time = bad idea, so I kept taking her back to her room and closing the door in hopes that  she would stay – nope.  At this point my nerves were shot, my patients lost, and my head pounding.  FINALLY Mark made it home and he took her outside in her new wagon – PEACE AND QUIET.  I managed to screw up the gravy and had to start over again – not so peaceful.

Dinner is served and Colleen not only dumps her plate, tries to stab the table with her fork but also tries to open her water and dump it out.  Then the screaming starts.  I couldn’t handle it anymore.  “SHUT UP!!!”  She looked at me like I was crazy mommy and continued with her behavior and I was done.  My mind went into hyper drive – She won’t listen to me, she won’t do what she is told, she wants to do nothing but run wild - what have I done wrong???  I can’t handle it anymore and start on Mark for him to DO SOMETHING with her – go give her a bath – SOMETHING, of which he does. 

Now I sit here thinking about everything that is wrong – everything that I need to do – everything that I need to make a decision on and everything that I have said to Colleen today and I feel HORRIBLE.  When did I become bitchy, angry, crazy mommy?  When did the sweet little girl who wanted nothing to do with ANYONE but her mommy become the wild daddy-loving girl she is now? 

I’m hoping that today was just a bad day – for both of us. 

This song made me feel so much better - BAD DAY