"Today was a bad day mama but tomorrow is a new day"

Have you ever woke up in the morning and just had a "feeling" that everything was going to go wrong? Well if not I envy you. I have had that feeling several times and yesterday that familiar feeling returned. I have to wake up early because I have to get my girls to sitter and school which is on the opposite side of town and then drive 45 minutes out of my way in the other direction because job likes to waste my gas and not pay me for it. So as usual my phone alarm goes off at 5:15 am and I wake up and stretch grab my phone to shut it off and of course check Facebook :) When I tried to get up I realized I was still "attached" to the baby so now I have to somehow encourage her to come off BUT stay asleep for at least 15 minutes so that I could shower quick. Needless to say because this day was predestined to go bad my plan did not work well at all. She stayed "attached" until 545am. I need to be out of the shower at this time so that I can wake my Retired Nursling (RN) up so she can go down and have breakfast while I get Baby Nursling (BN) dressed.

I jumped into the shower very quickly. So quickly it was still warming up while I was lathering up (the worst!). I jump out, wrap the towel around me, and went back into the bedroom to wake up RN. She of course starts to whine and fuss. I encourage her to get up and go potty then go downstairs so I can make her breakfast. Once that task was done I run up to throw clothes on myself and then to wake up BN. Now about a few weeks before BN decided she wanted to start potty learning  but I have not had a weekend to sit and dedicate to her newest milestone so when we are at home we let her go with out bottoms and she tells us when she needs to poop and pee. We also sit her on the pot as soon as she wakes up and before she goes to sleep at night. This morning nothing different I woke her up took her pants and diaper off asked her if she wanted to "put pees in the toilet" she smiled and said "yesh" and away we went. I sat her on the pot and instantly she peed. She smiled so big she is always so proud of herself and I am so proud of her. She is a smart cookie. I asked her via sign language if she is "all done" and she says "yesh". I go to grab her and she grabs the toilet seat for dear life and refuses to get up. I asked her again if she was done (including words with the sign) and she said "yesh". I go to grab her... same thing! I'm frustrated because we are completely behind schedule so I back off, I push her stool under her feet in case she feels she's actually done when before I come back and I travel down to check on RN.

 She is eating cereal, doing an activity on the iPad, and humming a song. I ask her how she is if she needed anything else. She replies "no" with out looking up. I give her the countdown to be done and head back up the stairs. BN is still on the pot kicking her feet talking to the dog who looks just as frustrated with her being on the pot still as I am. "Okay ma'am you have to be done. We have to get dressed. You can not sit here all day. You're going to get hemorrhoids." I reach to grab her this time I make sure I get her hands before she can latch on to the toilet then I pick her up kicking and screaming and hitting and maybe an attempt to bite. In the most calm voice I can muster "Please calm down I understand you're upset but you must get dressed we have to go mommy has to work". while wrestling with BN I yell down to RN to be done put away her dishes and come upstairs to get dressed. No response, of course. I pick up BN (who has calmed down by now) and travel down the stairs to see RN took 2 bites of cereal and ate no fruit just sitting down tending to her game. "You need to come upstairs and get dressed now!" "But I am not done..." "I understand but you had 30 minutes and all you did was mess around we need to go now" (insert tears here). I wish I could give her more time to eat but we just do not have that kind of time in the AM.

So, of course I have to sit down BN to help get RN dressed (insert tantrum here). Now I have two  malfunctioning kids. By now I can feel me getting to my meltdown threshold. I try to breathe through it with out saying any words but I am still getting frustrated. We are late.... we are crying because we cant sit on toilets until our butts fall off and because we chose to play instead of it.....**sigh**

we move on to the bathroom where as in my head all hell breaks loose. RN has stopped whining and goes to brush her teeth. BN is happy as long as she is on my hip. I sit her on the counter top allow her to nurse while I brush my teeth and make sure RN does a good job at brushing her teeth. Once RN is down I tell her to sit on the toilet so I can fix her hair for school "Can I have my hair like Frozen? Like the braid?" "I do not know how to do that and I do not have time to look up how to do it and practice it. I just can not do that right now" (insert whine) "I am sorry honey I just can not right now". I place BN on the floor " Can you stand here really quickly while I get sister's hair together?" Nope (insert meltdown here) I try to pick her up and she does that thing that all toddlers know how to do when they become dead weight and just melt between your arms so they are hard to hold on to no matter how hard you try. I place her back on the floor and she melt downs harder...... Her sister takes this opportunity to tell me how mean I am because I wont give her "Frozen Elsa hair" and because to white and kick and fuss. This is where mommy looses her shit and has her own tantrum. "COME ONE GUYS YOU ARE KILLING ME HERE! GET IT TOGETHER! WHY ARE YOU ACTING LIKE THIS TODAY OF ALL DAYS?!" This never works as you know so know they are crying louder and harder and the baby is crying so hard at this point there is snot coming out of her knows like a waterfall. In my proudest mommy moment i pick BN and I take her to the room and lay her down "WHEN YOU ARE DONE YOU CAN COME BACK! lay down relax" nope pissed her off even more and then she follows me back down the hall to scream louder and show me how well my idea to "rest" worked out. I proceed to do RN's hair who is still upset about the stupid Frozen hair. "WHY ARE YOU STILL CRYING OVER HAIR??" I brush her hair and braid her pig-tails and just sit on the tub and look at my two kids who are crying over God knows what at this point. I just look...wasting more time making us more late but I have no clue what to do. I yelled at them, I blamed them for us being late, I punished them for demonstrating feelings that they have no control over, but most importantly I lost my shit and lashed out on them verses helping them work through their emotions. The do not know how to handle their emotions because I do not even know how to handle my emotions... I freaking yelled at them.... several times! Some control mom!


I spent the entire day at work sad because I lost my shit. Even though I apologized to them both and they to me I still felt bad. I fell bad because I yelled I feel bad because I was not a good example I feel bad because clearly I am reflecting poorly on them. To most parents this is no big deal but this is a big deal to me because I vowed to be kinder, I vowed to listen, I vowed to be nice, to my children when they were born. I vowed to do better for them, I vowed to no treat them like I was treated by my parents and look at me..... I am no better and doing exactly what I said I would not.

I get home from work.... RN is in the middle of a current meltdown. She wanted cereal for an afternoon snack BUT she went to sleep and woke up at 5pm. The issue here is that dinner is at 530p-6pm. I can feel my stress threshold rise again and I want to scream because I left to work from this and here I am again in the middle of it. My lovely husband did what he could but I can see his frustration and I try to do my best.... Which sucked this morning. I put my stuff away and sat on the couch. BN crawled in my lap... she who got the grunt of my frustration and lashing this AM was excited to see me home... the only one. She crawled in my lap and signed for "Milk" and made her attempt at saying the word. I latched her and called RN over and she sat in my lap and laid her head on the unoccupied boob. I rubbed her head she settled down and said "Today was a bad day mama...but tomorrow is a new day" (this is what we say when we are not having a good day)