I feel like absolute crap after I yell at my kids.
I spent a good portion of my childhood being yelled at. It was my mother’s go-to place. Always. Well, except for that one time that my sister and I were playing in the kitchen while she was making pancakes and, well, somehow she burned her hand on the pan and ended up chasing me upstairs and hitting me with a spatula. I will never forget that day. That was the day that both she and I knew that we would and could NEVER hit our children. I don’t know which one of us felt shittier, but from the look on her face after she’d done it, the look that I will never be able to erase from my memory, I’m going to guess that she felt worse.
But, from years of being yelled at, I became, well, a yeller. I hate that this is how I am. It is actual WORK for me to find another way to deal with the kids when they are whining, screaming, yelling, ignoring, fighting. I try to breathe deeply and count to ten. I try to walk away. I try to rationalize with them. But, you know, more often than not, it is I against them. 1 against 3. Those numbers are clearly NOT in my favor. When I am with my children one-on-one, they are amazing. TRULY.
Emily is my best friend. She and I discuss clothes and her friends and girlstuff and download our favorite songs from Glee together.
Josh is my dude. We snuggle together and talk about baseball and our love/hate relationship with Brett Favre and his newest obsession…extreme weather.and, you know, eat cake with chopsticks together.
and Isabella is just my little piece of awesome. We talk about her imaginary friend Eneed and what he’s been up to and today she told me that the person she saw riding the motorcyle had to be her favorite teacher, Fredelle, who as far as I know DOES NOT own a motorcycle.
But throw them together and Emily fights with Josh. And Josh fights with Isabella. And Isabella fights with Josh. nonstop. A friend was just telling me that her daughters talk to each other in the car. WHAT? Want to know what my children do in the car? They talk OVER EACH OTHER. They all want my attention at the exact same time. so, Emily yells at Josh. And Josh yells at Isabella. And Isabella yells at Emily.
and then I yell at them.
Because we are in a car. And there’s nowhere for me to go. I can’t walk away from the situation. I can’t concentrate on keeping my hands at 10 and 2 and not, you know, killing us, when there’s so much NOISE.
And then I feel like crap.
And today was no different. except for the fact that I am actually sick so I already felt like crap. I am hopped up on a combination of Mucinex and Tylenol Cold & Sinus and I don’t even know if they are okay to take together but I didn’t really know what else to do. And the meds didn’t even help me. They really only caused me to overshare on Twitter…
So, I yelled at my kids today. And I’m not proud of it. But, sigh, at least there were no spatulas involved, I guess.
and that’s really all I have to say about that. oh, wait, except for the fact that I really want to buy a pair of cowboy boots – because, you know, now that I’m SOUTHERN and all I really feel like I could totally pull them off. these ones, actually. and the 12-year-old girl in me can’t get off the damn site because, seriously, how can they have categories that are labeled “tall shaft” and “short shaft”?
Also, is anyone else creeped out by those Pioner, Oh Pioneer Levi’s commercials?
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