The art of sucking it up

I have been too busy lately. The ideas for my posts haven't been allowed to germinate properly. As such, this post might be a disjointed post. Maybe that is just as well, my posts are like essays half the time. I need to mix it up more.

so

Last night was one of the roughest nights of my parenthood. Both of my children tested the boundaries in very age specific ways.

My daughter is in gymnastics. She is one of the younger kids there and it is her first class. I sit on the bleachers and watch her struggle. Add to the fact that she is six, well, she doesn't have many coping skills. In other words, when she can't do cartwheels or tumbles the way the other kids do, she gets all sobby and snot bubble. The teacher does temper this a bit. She acknowledges the beginning of tears and urges her onwards. Pancake responds to this.

This is not my daughter, but close enough for our purposes here :)

Then, more then once now, when class is over, she makes a beeline for me and trys to lets er rip, snot bubble wise. Seeing your child struggle and fail absolutely sucks. I know there are ways to prevent this whole process. I could let her quit gymnastics, I could give her candy or premedicate her with xanax.

Or---I could have her keep going. Which is what I am doing. She doesn't struggle every class and she is making gains. I acknowledge that it is hard and frustrating for her, I tell her it's ok to feel angry and sad, but she needs to suck it up a little. Having full on meltdowns is no good, she's a big girl now. So we practice, her and I, learning how to deal with it all. And not giving up.

After all, what else does she have to do, watch more spongebob?

Then there is the little man in my life, Mac. When you are two feet tall, life is centered around very simple needs. Toys, food, bath time, snuggle while watching Wall-E, chasing the cat . . . Only I am starting to stand in the way of these things. I stand in the way of food from the pantry while I am making dinner. I stand in the way of bath time until he puts away his toys. The toys was last night. He had absolutely no interest in cleaning up.

And last night I finally admitted that he knows better. Yay see, when toddlers don't want to do something, they often act dumb or temporarily lose their hearing. I can buy it, I mean, he's little and very cute. But, he has figured out all the child safety locks and is basically potty training himself. Also, according to his teacher, he always is "such a good helper" during clean up time. The boy knows what he is doing. So, I teach him with time outs.

It was very rough last night. He fought the time out for thirty minutes. I kept having to put him back on the naughty step. All the while he was screaming and snot bubble. These very primal ways of expressing himself, these trigger all my mommy instincts. I kept my cool though, no snot bubbles from mommy.

And I held firm. And after a time out he did indeed put his toys away.

I called and told my husband all of this. He said, we are truly blessed. And if he was there, he would gladly take on all the burden.

He is right, we are very very blessed. And when we get settled, I will divide the discipline duties once again.

This is all of us, all sorts of love and crazy hair in the morning. :)