I am going to tell you the truth. It’s going to make me look bad, but it needs to be said because I think if I don’t say it, I might lose my freakin’ mind pretty darned soon. Sometimes I don’t enjoy being a mommy. Like, pretty often actually.
Now don’t get all high and mighty and suggest that I should’ve thought of that a long time ago, blah blah blah. I already tell myself that every day, but really — before you had kids could anyone tell you anything that measured up in the teesniest little bit to the crapstorm that actually IS having kids? No. Now keep in mind that I didn’t say — and I will never say — that I don’t like my kids. In fact, I love them and I would never ever give them back, even knowing everything that I know now. So quit eyeballing them. They’re MINE.
What I’m saying is that there are times, a lot of times, more times than I’d like to admit, that I am sitting in the midst of pillows flying, the baby screaming and Turbo shrieking and hurling himself off furniture, and I’m thinking, “I wish this would stop.” The times that I most often disenjoy (yes, it’s a word. I just made it up, so there.) being a mommy are the morning and the evening. The in between part (when I’m usually at work) is pretty okay. Does that make me a bad mommy?
In the mornings, Turbo hops out of bed promptly at the asscrack of dawn and refuses to give me three minutes to shower, put on 
makeup and get ready for work before he begins telling me all the things he wants. (Hot chocolate, a snack, a movie, not to go to school, not to get dressed, etc.) We have a bunny clock — the bunny is in bed, Turbo stays in bed; the bunny gets up, Turbo gets up! (seems so simple), and it’s set for 6:45am. THAT is what time the bunny gets up, my friends. But Turbo? No. Asscrack. And when I suggest that he goes back to bed until the bunny gets up? Mayhem. Screaming, pounding on walls. More screaming. It is horrible. And it’s not a great way for a non-morning person type to begin her day before she’s even had coffee. And this is most mornings.
In the evenings, the screaming usually begins on the way home from school/daycare. The boys poke each other and Turbo pretty much does everything he can to ensure that Lunchbox will begin screaming. Then we get to listen to it all the way home. Fun. That sets the mood just right for the rest of the night, doesn’t it? I honestly think that having a baby screaming in the backseat should take the same kind of traffic precedence that a wailing siren does. I should get to blow through stoplights and swerve through traffic just to get home as fast as possible to MAKE. IT. STOP. If a cop pulled me over while that was going on, I’m pretty sure he’d let me go just so he didn’t have to listen to it while he wrote the ticket. Anyway, that’s just the car ride home. Then there’s the wailing baby attached to my leg while I try to cook dinner while Turbo demands a snack and a drink within three seconds of opening the front door. He has also become frightfully accustomed to watching “Dragon Tales” or “Scooby Doo” or whatever his Netflix video of preference is at any given point in time AS SOON as he gets home. I know that I am a bad mommy for letting him watch TV right when he gets home instead of encouraging creative play, yada yada yada. I KNOW.
Then there’s dinner. Dinner time is a special kind of hell evidently reserved for people like me who are being paid back for having wonderful fun during our younger more independent days. There is food everywhere. No one of the testosterone-fueled variety will stay in his chair for more than three seconds. There is bribing involved. I am usually told at least once that whatever I’ve prepared “looks yukky” or that Turbo doesn’t like it (whether he’s tasted it or not). It’s just an absolute DELIGHT.
By bath time, The Major is usually home, and I’m pretty close to cooked. I often let him handle it and sometimes bedtime too because I fear that I might snap and send a child flying through the air.
And all of this leaves me with a mess to clean up, a headache, and a crapload of GUILT. For being a bad mommy. For not loving my kids enough. For having so little patience with them. For getting so aggravated. For… everything.
But there are those flashes of brilliance at our house, too. The times when a tiny face looks up at me with sheer love and little arms come up around my neck, and I know that I can try again tomorrow to be the mommy I want to be — the mommy they deserve. At those times I know that I’m doing okay somehow because even though I’m impatient and close to the edge, they aren’t. They’re always ready for a hug or a snuggle. They’re always ready for me to try again. Somehow, despite the bad mommying that I feel they get so often, they’re turning into sweet and loving little people, full of joy for life. As long as I don’t do anything to break that, I think we’ll do okay.
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