Not Such A Proud Moment...

You're going to read this and laugh. Or you'll read it and snort in disgust. I'm aware of this before I'm even typing, but I still can't help myself.

I feel awful because I yelled at Eli today. Go ahead and tell me to get over myself now....

I'm not excusing it, but let me explain. It has been an especially taxing week due to lots of commitments and 'behind the scenes' work I'm having to do. For example, today I spent Eli's entire school time (and Maddux's morning nap time) on the phone trying to get other parents in Eli's class to help me with an upcoming class party. This will be the third party this year, and potentially the third time that I'm 100% responsible for every last detail and morsel of food. Yet I never signed up to be a room-mom; I was totally cornered in the parking lot one day last September. On top of that, when I went to pick Eli up (after wasting my morning pleading and leaving voice mails), I was handed a folder of new things to call about regarding an upcoming festival at the school. Now I get the pleasure of 'asking' these same moms to help out with baked goods, time and creativity. And I am NOT a good delegator.

So that being said, my patience was already thin when Eli started acting whiny after lunch. Maddux chimed in with her loud self crying and yelling over who-knows-what and fatigue. My mind was numb and I was physically tired from the last fifteen minute marathon of making Eli's lunch, then Maddux's lunch, then feeding Maddux, then peeling Eli's banana, then engaging him in conversation while I fed her, then straining my neck to check the caller ID to make sure it wasn't an absolute emergency call coming in as I had no free hands, then trying to move my chair out of the view of the front door as some random service man was furiously knocking at my door (again: no free hands).... If you're not exhausted after reading that sentence, I really should upload some video...it's not pretty, but it would get my point across!

But even in those hectic fifteen minutes, I had a light at the end of the tunnel: both kids were less than 20 minutes from a nap. After fighting with Eli to get upstairs while I simultaneously tried to catch every bit of Maddux's spit-up as it was brown (she had just eaten prunes and we have new carpet on the stairs), I changed Maddux's diaper and left Eli in his bedroom so I could put her down for a nap first. This would require no more than two minutes. He could do it. He does it every day with no problems. Before I left his room I told him that I expected him to stay in his room and read his book. I even gave him his coveted blanket! Obviously he was in the mood to disobey because I wasn't in Maddux's room for 30 seconds before I heard his feet padding down the hall. He walked in and started to happily gab away and I snapped at him and said "Get back to your room NOW!" in a very 'yelling' voice. His eyes got big and away he went. So it worked in the moment, but when I got to his room, of course he was smiling and he knew full well that he'd disobeyed. He lost the privilege of books before his nap and I walked out still frustrated and upset.

The reason I'm unhappy with my lashing out is not because I am naive enough to think I'll never yell at my kids. I know that will happen at many times in the future. I just hoped to save it for 'bigger' things. I am very proud of the fact that Lehr and I have (HAD!) not yelled at Eli yet. We've strived to be calm in the face of whatever he throws at us, and we've been 100% successful (to my knowledge) in not yelling so far. So, as most do, the parental, pie-in-the-sky dream I had of not yelling at my toddler officially died about 20 minutes ago.