I'm not a perfect mom. Shocking, I know. But sometimes there's a gap between not being a perfect mom and being so much less than perfect as to feel inadequate. That's where I am right now. Today I changed my baby in the back of my mother-in-law's Yukon with mostly dry wipes in dripping rain and sleet and biting wind buffeting us because I forgot my house key when we left for lunch and I thought hubby would be back before us. Today I attempted to micromanage Alex's every move because he wasn't acting the way I wanted him to act. I failed, by the way.
Katherine is just about as easy-going as they come, but lately her behavior in restaurants, such as the testing of her volume, the endlessly repeated dropping of her bottle and pacifier, and her sudden bursts of displeasure are making it hard for me to want to take her out. It's a phase, I know, I know, I've done this before. I ALSO know, because I'm much more self-aware this go-round, that my perception of her is far, far different from that of the people around me. At least nine times out of ten, and certainly when the people around me are both of her doting grandmothers and a 2-year-old little boy at the next table who coughed two inches away from her face. No, really.
I guess, as mothers, our hope is for our children to be their best with people they don't get to see very often. In this case, my husband's parents. Not that I think Katherine will be judged for her post-afternoon-nap crankiness or her tendency to fight sleep when more than one thing is happening in the living room, but I do wish they could see her at her best. And Alex, with him I feel even more at a loss and less in control. His come-and-go shyness, his unpredictable (but OH so familiar) moods, and his excellent ability to push all my buttons at once converge to make me want to scream. Preferably while running away in the general direction of a spa.
But instead I'll bite my tongue and give him the speech for the ten thousandth time about how if you focus on the bad things (his grandparents leaving on Monday) you'll miss all the good things that happen in the meantime (tomorrow's fun and festivities, for example). He doesn't buy it, and I'm not sure I would either. His negative outlook he gets from yours truly.
I'm just feeling like I came in a little bit under the Bell Curve O' Motherhood the past couple of days, I guess. And I feel like making it publicly known (again?) that my sun rises and sets on those two small people. Even when he flips about losing a DS game, forgets what he's supposed to be doing in the middle of doing it, or is already acting like an emo-teenager at the age of 5. And her, even when she is inconsolable from exhaustion but won't go to sleep or seems to time her bowel movements to the worst. possible. moment.
They're mine, and I love them. Who wants perfect kids? Does the same go for mothers?
