every momma needs a break like this. the motherhood is that way. in spite of all of its good, the monotony of it could kill a girl from time to time. it gets the best of even the best of us.
my pops is killing me right now. one minute i am telling her that she is the cutest muffin in the whole dog gone world and the next minute i am about to snap.
the kid can't get dressed without crying. her sensitivity to clothing… the design on her unders isn't right, the waist band on her skirt is too scratchy, the seam on her sock is in the wrong place, the sleeves on a shirt are too floppy (really? floppy? yep.)… i could go on for days.
and once the girl gets clothing on, it doesn't go up from there.
the shoes!
the girl can't find a pair that fits "just right" to save her life!
she's like goldilocks to the tenth degree.
and that is just one of my three little
if you've got munchkins, that can walk and talk, you know exactly what i am talking about. us mommas love them to pieces, but if offered a hall pass by the hubs for a few days away, we are all in.
and so this past weekend, i was in "hall pass from the kiddos" heaven! we chatted, we giggled, we read magazines, we played cards, we whined, we dined, we wined...
we did some chair poses...
while doing all of this, we swapped some stories. i think my gal pals might have had to lift up their jaws when i told them the story of the day i dropped a ginormous curse at the family dinner table when three little muffins protested the menu that had been lovingly slaved over by yours truly. it's not a moment that i am proud of.
it had been building for some time. my girls would come to the dinner table night after night and lobby complaints about how they didn't care for this or that. for quite some time the complaints department was on overload. on no given day were all three of the buser girlies happy with their meal time offerings. momma kept trying, but it was of no use.
finally, momma implemented a policy. the policy went like this:
"when you come to the dinner table you will sit down and say, 'thank you for dinner, mom!' no more. no less. and then you will eat said dinner without giving a commentary on your dining experience. is everybody clear?"
they said they were.
and this worked for a wee little bit. my darling daughters would get called to the table and they would recite the required script.
but slowly, ever so slowly, they began to interject a tone or an eye roll. and even more slowly, they began to add a "but" to the end of the given script…
"thank you for dinner, mom, but you know i don't like…."
and i would smile and tell them that the additional commentary was not welcome.
and night after night after night after night… momma felt like a tea kettle getting ready to blow.
and then one day, momma blew. a curse word landed into a heap at the center of the kitchen table for the whole buser family to digest. and it was a big one. the mother of all curse words. oy.
i am not proud of this. it brings me great embarrassment to share it with my besties while looking them in the eye. and after i shared this truth, i felt a wash over of shame. in spite of their encouragement, i felt a "get it together, momma!" internal pep talk coming on.
i mean really! i'm teaching my girlies self-control and i have none myself. what kind of a mother am i??? and that started a mental spiral in my mind.
for the love!
and then i thought about this blog and this space where i celebrate and mark moments in our lives for my girlies. i have hopes that one day they will look back at my written memories and find laughter, hope and encouragement in their own motherhood experience. i hope they will see how they grew and how they were raised and the journey we took as a family.
but then it dawned on me. they need to see the whole picture. highlighting just the "best of the busers" isn't a comprehensive view. it is simply a skewed angle. i hope that the "best of" reel is the one that they remember most, but i also want them to know that the motherhood has some "bloopers". there are moments where we just don't show our best selves- but that doesn't make me or you a bad mother. we can fall into that roll easily, but it is in recognizing the moments that we are not proud of and then transforming our failures into opportunities of learning that make us better mothers. we have all had "those moments". we've all given a full frontal of our worst selves. but it is when we pick ourselves back up, apologize to the kiddos for the moment of weakness and then propel ourselves forward with a new plan that we hit the motherhood jackpot.
i think we lie to ourselves and set up these expectations that the motherhood jackpot is when we get it all right. but the more that i think about it, i think the motherhood jackpot often comes in the form of failure. and what we do with those failures…
do we stuff them under the rug and hide them from our kiddos, pretending that mom of the year would never ever do that?
or do we go there? do we address the issue head on with our children and use our less than moments to teach them what it looks like to fail, pick ourselves back up, pivot in a new direction, and propel ourselves forward? do we use our lowest moments to teach them about grace and forgiveness and overcoming?
and as i sat there in my "post sharing this story with my besties" head space, i realized that i want to do the latter. stuffing is a very typical go-to reaction. but growth never comes from the internal stuffing. self-loathing does. shame does. but growth? nope. not usually.
as for this momma, i want growth.
i would love to tell you that i won't curse at the family dinner table again. but i can't guarantee it. i will try hard. i will be better today than i was yesterday. i will celebrate my successes and i will try not to bathe in my failures. and through it all, i won't hide. i am, after all, raising girls who will be somebody's mother. i want them to know that the motherhood is hard. there is no "perfect". we all are just doing the very best that we can.
and even then, sometimes a momma just needs a breather.
thank God for a weekend away! this momma was in desperate need.
OMG! Tasha! I had the exact same outburst this past week! kids were all ugly faced and turned up noses at what i was cooking. i had spent a long time preparing dinner, excited about my creativity and resourcefulness to use up what we had on hand, and not having to run off to the store for ingredients. At least I thought it would be wonderful. I know the kids don't like everything, but i just think, "hey, they must try it, and they will come around." for me, I cook for my husband. I want to impress him. so i was happy with the meal....until he came home from work, lifted the lid and exclaimed, with the most horrible look of disgust on his face, "oh yuck! I hate fish stew!!!!" .....right then and there, i lost it! i started throwing things, i slammed down the knife and cutting board, and yelled "f*ck this!" and pretty much had the biggest tizzy fit i've had in a long time....tears even! nevertheless, we talked it over, got through it, apologies on both sides and worked it out. your words are perfect in describing what it is really like to be a mom on a day to day basis! thanks for making me feel "normal". :)
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