I’m a terrible blogger.
You know when you get so busy—so very, very busy that you just have to sit back and laugh, because it’s such a very long, twisty line of tasks and goals that never seems to end? Goals that are totally out of reach, (like finding time to put out the Fall decorations before we get to cleaning the dishes after Thanksgiving dinner), deadlines that seem impossible to meet.
That would be me.
My life right now reminds me of one of my favorite scenes from I Don’t Know How She Does It, when Kate is “distressing pies” at two a.m., trying to make it look like she had the time to pull off home baked goods for her children’s coral concert.
Okay, so technically I’m not distressing mince pies at two in the morning, and my son is not yet school aged, so I need not worry about that middle-of-the-night baking quite yet. (Although I have four rotting bananas that will NOT become bread in the near future.) My life isn’t that crazy. But I do know that list-making mentality that gets us supermoms into trouble every time. I actually can feel myself ticking things off my list: Bananas? Garbage.
And now that I’ve caught up on all my deadlines, and returned all of my emails, I’m at that point when my list of things-to-catch-up-on is so long, I’m overwhelmed by what to do first. (Well, that’s kind of a lie. Clearly, finishing this blog won.)
In the midst of this, I’ve had that moment of other terribleness: I’m a terrible parent. Really. Life is so busy that it feels at times I’m not doing an adequate job at parenting my child. Case in point: Monday is storytime at the library in our little town, and Max, quite cranky from the molar teething, seems soothed when I give him something to drink. But happily swigging, he runs up to an older boy, about three, and before I know it, I’m watching Max bite this boy’s shirt.
I scold him, remove him, and he happily goes on his way, sippy cup in hand.
Then, after a rousing rendition of “The Train Welcome Song,” Max, standing a good five feet away from me, turns towards a young girl, not quite two, named Abby. And like a switch was flipped in his little tooth-achy head, he goes after her. It feels like a slow motion horror scene: Max and his giant teeth, heading straight for little Abby’s shoulder.
Imagine this coming straight at ya!
Luckily for Abby, she was standing right in front of her mother, who stops my son and tells him, “No biting.” I then reach him as he goes for a second attempt. I’m mortified, Abby is crying and we are leaving. Fast.
I get a now very quiet Max home, I sense that he senses I am p-i-s-s-e-d. I do what any mother should do in this situation: I leave him in the playroom, call my own mother and cry.
Now, the biting thing up until this point has been limited to me and Ned. On a few other occasions where he’s opened up and bared those giant teeth to another child it’s usually been a fighting-over-a-toy thing. He’s never done it unprovoked.
It all comes spilling out to my mom. My child is the kid in school that bites. No one will want to bring their kid over to our house ever again. I’m never going to be able to take him back to the library, and face those moms. Abby’s horrified face is going to haunt me. Not to mention, the new pediatrician wants Max to be evaluated because he’s not saying sentences yet. Doesn’t “green gourd” count?
I’m fighting that stay-at-home-working-mom thing. I cannot not work, and because I do, Max’s social life is limited to a few things a week. Dammit that one of the two days this week he’s getting out to play with others, he tries to eat them instead.
And maybe it’s me. Maybe if I spent less time working and more time trying to get him to communicate with us, he wouldn’t try to do it with his teeth. I have no answers. I am merely venting. See? I’m a terrible blogger.
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