Part 1: I Suck At Being A Mom

It's true. I will deny it no longer. I suck at this whole motherhood thing. And it is heartbreaking to admit. But I figure that admitting and accepting failure is the first step to success, right? So, here I go. Forgive me in advance if this gets long as I am quite sure that it will, what with all the crap floating around in my head right now.

Before I begin to detail all of my terrible not-so-motherly transgressions I want to first explain that I am not trying to steal an idea from other "Mommy Bloggers" out there. I am clearly not one of them, though I do follow many of them. One in particular comes to mind whenever I am faced with the fact that I am indeed a bad mom. She goes by @herbadmother on Twitter and you can find her blog at http://www.HerBadMother.com. Her name is in fact Catherine and her tagline is "Bad is the new good."  I have often tried to console myself with this thought, however, it just doesn't work. So, again, I want to say that I am in no way trying to capitalize on this idea that it's OK to be a "Bad Mom". I am also not suggesting that Catherine is a bad mom, from what I read in her blog and her tweets she is a very nurturing and loving mother. I just need to get this off my chest, K?

Now, let's see, where do I begin? I'll start at just about 25 minutes ago and work my way back. How about that?

Alright, about a half hour ago I kissed my husband goodnight and headed up to bed. I have a massive sinus headache and had planned to take some meds then crawl into bed and hopefully sleep off this pounding in my head. Sadly, this did not happen exactly as planned. I got into my room and was just about to start undressing when I hear noise coming from the kids' room. It sounds like the boys are playing and/or fighting. This ticks me off royally because they were tucked into bed an hour and a half before. There should be absolutely no noise coming from down the hall. At all.

Dismayed, I heaved a rather large sigh and walked myself down the hall. I burst into the room (surprise is the best weapon a parent has in these situations, yes?), turned the light on and yelled something about their having been up here for an hour and a half ... My tirade didn't last long. In fact, I'm not sure I even finished the thought because I immediately noticed that Noah is asleep (he lifted his head briefly then went back to sleep) and Adam is doing his weird half-awake freak out - this is semi normal as he has suffered from night terrors since he was a toddler.

Of course, I immediately went to him to try to wake him up and figure out what was wrong. He was shivering despite jammies and blankets. He was also acting like he needed to go pee. So, I pick up my 6yo little boy who clings to me as I take him to the bathroom. It took a bit of work but I finally get him seated on the toilet where he does his business though not without lots of shivering, crying and not really being able to communicate with me. He's got a little bit of diarrhea going on - same thing his father, myself and younger brother have had the pleasure (can you taste the sarcasm?) of enjoying over the past few days.

And here is where my most recent Bad Mom moment comes in.

My first thought is this: Dang it. I'm going to have to keep him home from school tomorrow. I can't deal with both of them all day. Alone. Ugh!!!


Yup. I suck that much. Here my child isn't even fully awake. He's obviously not feeling good - tummy ache, shivers, diarrhea, etc - and my thought is that I just can't handle a full day with my monstrous children all by myself tomorrow. And there I go again. I called them monstrous when in all actuality they're just normal little boys. I immediately berated myself and returned my focus to my poor little man.

Got him back to bed, snuggled for a minute, got him comfortable and within moments he was sound asleep again. And then I was back to hating myself for being such a worthless mother. As I left his room and headed back to my own I was inspired to start writing again. You see, I often lose my voice in the face of stress and I've had more than my fair share over the past 6 months. I decided that I needed to begin confessing all of my horrific "achievements" (ha ha) as a mom recently. In fact, I had intended on confessing to much more tonight. However, my face is still on fire. The light from my laptop screen is causing sharp stabbing pain behind my eyes and I really do just want to sleep right now.

But tomorrow? Yes, tomorrow shall reveal more.