My kid, give me strength.

I don’t think I’m good at being a mom.  I mean, I don’t hit her or anything, and I usually really enjoy spending time with her.  But, she’s going through a phase (oh sweet jesus on a cracker, please be a phase.  I don’t think I could handle it if this is the person she’s turning out to be) where she’s just….cranky….and whiny…and kinda bitchy headstrong.  We’ve been needing to disipline her for a few weeks now.  Nothing serious, just telling her to “put your bottom on the seat,” or “Claire, we don’t touch the buttons on the TV.”

But, she won’t stop.  It’s a constant battle to get her diaper changed, get her clothes on, get her to eat something other than hotdogs in a place other than on the couch.  She fights everything.  She’ll walk up to the TV (which is large, and sitting on a coffee table and I have fears of it falling down on top of her), looks at me (and I tell her that she should play with something else.  Here, what about this AWESOME BOOK or this REALLY FUN BABY STROLLER?!), shakes her head and puts her hand right on the screen.

.

I don’t know what to do.  I try to distract her, give her something else tp play with, take her in another room where the temptation of playing with things that are off limits are not an issue.  But she runs back into the living room.  Where the temptation is.  We’re going to change the layout of the house when we move, and put the TV on the wall and the cable box above it so she can’t touch it.

Maybe it’s the move.  Maybe she’s stressed out.  Maybe it’s just that I’m on my period and don’t have ANY patience.  But, I’m at my wits end.  I’m frustrated and I find myself really enjoying the hours that she’s at the daycare because it’s calm and quiet in the house.  I don’t WANT to feel like this.  I’m not going to have a daycare to ship her off to when we move.  I’m going to have to face it head on and figure it out.

I just don’t have the energy now.

The Mommy Shuffle

JR’s been in Houston all weekend (he left Friday night) and I think Claire’s pissed. She hasn’t been sleeping. I figured she either loves me so much that she wants to spend ALL her time with me, or she wants me to die. Of exhaustion.

I’m betting on the second one.

Friday night at 1:45, she woke up. She used to just mumble a little bit in her crib, whine some and go right back to sleep. Not Friday night. She woke me up with a scream that I likened to someone clubbing her with a….well, club.

I ran in her room, expecting blood, or gore, or at least a mangled limb of some sort. Nope. She was fine. She giggled, gave me her empty milk cup and raised her arms to be picked up. Wide awake.

This, in case you weren’t sure, wasn’t the time to play. I told her that, but she wasn’t having it. So I picked her up, expecting her to curl in my arms and put her head on my shoulder, like she usually does.

I don’t I have to tell you that she didn’t do that. She wiggled around, wanting to get down. I sat in the rocking chair and started singing “You Are My Sunshine.” She calmed down a bit and allowed me to rock her for about 10 minutes. By this time she had rolled over so her head was back on my shoulder, where it belonged. I stood up and walked over to her crib. But, she had a firm grip on my shirt. I was going to have to wait until she was asleep to put her down.

I rocked back and forth, shushing, for another 10 minutes. Then, very quietly and very carefully, I put her feet over the side of the crib. She moved and I took that oppertunity to put her down. She lay her head on the pillow, but her eyes were wide open. I covered her up, and started to walk out of the room.

“WAHHHH!”

Back up. I walked back over to the crib, laid her back down, and patted her back. The whole time I was shush-shush-shushing. She put her head down and pulled her legs under. More shushing, and more patting. About 5 minutes later, I stopped patting and just held my hand on her back.

The problem with this whole thing is that I was bent at the waist. My back hurt, my legs hurt and my arm was starting to go numb from the lack of blood circulating. I tried to put my head on my left arm and take some pressure off my lower back. This worked for a while, but in order to not fall, I had to bend my knees.

The weird thing is after about 5 more minutes of this, my heels started to fall asleep. I tried to look at her eyes to see if they were closed, but it was dark. I mean, it was 2:30 in the morning! So I looked at her ear to try to see her eyes peripherally. This didn’t work so well and now my fingers were numb, along with my right heel and the part under my left arm that was pushed up against the crib.

So, I took a chance. I lifted my hand up, hovering it over her back in case she woke up. She didn’t move. So, I straightened my back (ouch, by the way) and took a step back. She still hadn’t moved.

I took a deep breath, and turned around. I turned the doorknob and opened the door. Still asleep. Victory! I stepped out to the hall and started to close the door when I hear her cry again.

I closed the door, and she was back asleep before I got to the end of the hall.

Which I’m sure would have happened if I had just walked out the first time I tried.

*sigh*