Aka – Mummy You Will Lose Your Sh*t*. And it’s ok!
I’m guessing you can relate, when I say that I am an ‘angry woman’ far more these days than I was pre-kids.
Angrier than before?
Since two little boys came along I’ve had Ross (from Friends) Rage in most supermarkets within a 15 mile radius of my house and, in my local coffee shop, they still eye me with an air of slightly terrified precaution after witnessing me angrily sticking a full gingerbread man in my mouth to prove a point that neither son could have it if they fought over it any more. (Yes – I did only have myself to blame then, when they started trying to copy my rage-eating two hours later at tea time, with whole pork sausages, but you live and learn).
I know I’m not the only Mum to have meltdowns and I know generally, we are accepting and morale-boosting to each other but it really gets to me that there are still people out there – and some of them actually ARE Mums, that still get the ‘judgy’ ‘You wouldn’t catch me doing that’ face on.
So when my neighbour, who is expecting her first baby in April, asked me for any advice – I just said what I always do ‘do what gets you through,” adding “we’re still making it up now’” Because we are. And when baby is here and turns toddler I plan to elaborate. Because I think it’s better to offer ‘yes, they are little sh*ts sometimes’ and ‘everyone loses it sometimes’ than ‘sleep when they sleep’, ‘cherish it, it goes so fast’, ‘one day you’ll miss these moments’.
What people don’t always think about, when they shoot a judgy look, or even a comment, is how much genuine sh*t has happened already that day as a prologue to the mere 3 minutes of red-faced ranting you did in Sainsbury’s. And like I say, what really gets me, is that, yes, there are folks that haven’t got children and are only outsiders looking in but that also, there are other MUMS, DADS, ‘SISTAS’ who give that look, shake of the head, ‘I wouldn’t do that’ stare. For ten of the lovely ‘every-Mums’ out there, is at least one judgy Mum who looks on as if none of this ever happens to them, either because they’ve forgotten it as their kids grew older, or they don’t want to admit their own flaws so they openly judge other people’s. Or maybe it genuinely doesn’t happen to them – lucky them! (But I still think they’ve secretly thumped the bannister on their way out once or twice).
So, specifically for those that witnessed the Gingerbread man massacre or the supermarket rant, (where, I should add, I actually got to my knees to full on eye-ball my child into not embarrassing me any further) here is how the day probably progressed before then…
HOW IT ALL STARTS
5.28am ‘Muuummy’ ‘Muuummmy’ Toddler cries out.
I duvet-dive and pretend for 3 whole seconds that my life is a different one.
Tiny toddler feet scurry across the floorboards in the room next door and reality starts to dawn. The problem isn’t going to go away but I remain under the duvet and pray my husband hasn’t had an ‘American Hot’ pizza the day before.
‘Muuuummmy’
Just 3 more seconds under this duvet.
‘mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy, muuuuuuummy!’
The jig is up.
If I don’t act now, toddler will wake his 18 month old brother. I can’t cope with both of them right now. 6.28 is a far more realistic time for that.
Now, we have a very strict rule in our house, that no one comes into Mummy and Daddy’s bed. We didn’t want to get into that. No. We were sooooo sensible and smug about that. Except that, it is in many ways a ludicrous rule because all that happens is I end up curled up on the floor by my three-year-old’s bed covered over by a towel that I grab off the landing on the way past along with my pillow to pitch up at my usual spot next to his bed. But I’m too tired to think that through fully right now.
5-something am on the toddler room floor….
So – 5.39, all ‘tucked up’ on the toddler room floor, I’ve managed to get my little boy back to slumber on the proviso that I stay on the floor next to him. The floor may not be an ideal place for everyone to sleep but it’s amazing what peace exhaustion can bring so I drift back off like the Daddy bear in Peace At Last. It’s almost serene.
For 4 whole minutes.
5.43 – the soft toy massacre begins. On my head. It said in the book to ignore this, so I do.
5.45 The declaration ‘Mummy I come and sleep with your pillow with you’
5.50 He has moved from the bed (which seems ludicrous since there is now a bed going begging with neither of us in it) to take his place ‘with my pillow with me’. (NB This might be the part I’m supposed to cherish and I try to, I really do. I do a good knackered cherish actually)
Same floor. One extra person. NO ONE IN THE ACTUAL SODDING BED!
5.55 Mummy you’re pretty, I love you, you’re my best friend. (Actually, this bit is nice, who wouldn’t want to hear this?!)
6.10 Mummy, I want to go down the stairs. I SAID, I want to go down the stairs. (What would Supernanny do? Ignore, ignore, ignore)
6.15 I’m not your best friend any more Mummy.
6.16 Toddler pulls my make-shift towel duvet away, then my pillow like an angry officer in an army movie.
6.20 I’M. NOT. YOUR. BEST. FRIEENNNNND’
A bit more shouting taking us through to 6.30 something when the baby decides the two of us have been having fun without him for a whole few hours and it’s high time he got involved too.
We venture down the stairs and begin our day. I already (almost) need wine. But coffee will do.
To facilitate time to drink coffee comes Shreddies for toddler and banana for baby. Ie the first part of the don’t-want this/don’t-want-that ‘continental’ breakfast.
Toddler has recently decided to ‘be more baby’ and if throwing half his breakfast onto the tiled floor is good enough for baby, then it’s good enough for him too. Shreddies and milk everywhere, including my hair, we venture onwards.
A typical meal time
Now, some Mums have strategies for getting clothes on. Really logical strategies like ‘no TV until there’s clothes on’. I plan to do this every day. I plan. But then, I get 5-6 hours of disturbed sleep, much of it on the floor by my toddler’s bed, and something goes awry.
So I spend a good half hour trying to pin clothes on moving targets (children) until they have an acceptable amount of outerwear on.
Me by lunch time
It is now at least only 4 hours until it’s noon and then it’s only 7.5 hours to bedtime.
It’ll be around this time your three year old will announce something along the lines of m’ummy I weed on the mumpit’
As you wonder what on earth he means you lay out a pile of spare clothes for the changing bag.
‘Haha It’s on the mumpits. They’re sooooooaaaaaking!’
You laugh along with the toddler as you take off ‘baby’s’ nappy.
As you realise you haven’t got the clean nappy to hand you also come to terms with the fact toddler was actually trying to say crum-pets – ie tell you he has peed all over them just as he suggested a moment ago. Into the actual bag of crumpets. That you had been saving. For your own breakfast. Which you could have eaten 4 of so far.
While you pick up the sodden crumpet packet between the smallest amount of fingernail possible you turn to see that in the time this has happened the nappyless 18 month old is gleefully peeing all over the spare clothes pile you had put together previously.
We somehow manage to leave the house for a ‘paint a pot’ session – but I ill-time sugar, allowing my 3 year old to have a hot chocolate prior to the session (again I blame the blinkers of exhaustion) which results in mayhem as he prefers to ‘Spiderman’ up and down the stairs in the Paint a Pot café (which is frowned upon), roar loudly in other children’s faces and generally wind me up in cahoots with his younger brother who is fast-learning I’m an easy target (especially when I’ve had no breakfast due to wee-gate) and this is fun.
The final straw for my morning is when an older Nan-like figure sees toddler ‘Spidermanning’ down the stairs, and holds two small children back looking askance like a scene from we need to talk about Kevin.
IT’S THE FINAL STRAW
So when you see me at 11.20am – I may well be losing my shit because my day started 7 hours earlier, on a floor, under a towel, but
- I didn’t lose my sh*t at sleeping on the floor
- I didn’t lose it at the dirty protest on the spare clothes
- And I didn’t lose it at brotherly wind-ups, or even crumpet-gate, or failure to participate in the paid-for paint=a-blo**dy-pot session
So yes sometimes, just sometimes I don’t have the calm serenity Jo Frost wants from me in ‘Toddler SOS’. Because I’ve just had enough. For five minutes. Until someone does something cute or lovely and then I’m right back there in the cherish game.
I think all I’m saying is be kind to each other. It’s said a lot but often it isn’t quite followed through on. And I think especially from Mums to Mums, being kind, or at least not giving that funny look is what we should be doing for and each other every day.
*Original Sex and The City image YouTube
