I TRY To Be A Good Mom!

Like you've already read, I feel like I'm putting up a 110% as a Mom. Ok, ok, it's 97%. But hey, even moms have to pee. And 9 times out of 10, I've got an audience for that just so you know. I absolutely love being a mom. I feel like I was born to play this role and I adore my darling little girls and every minute I spend with them. That being said, they are now 22 months and 6 months old and both are officially mobile. On your marks, get set, GO! Loralei can crawl, scoot, roll, sit up, and she's already trying to pull up too. If I'm not nursing her, I'm pulling her from under the couch, the ottoman, the entertainment center, the bookshelf… or putting toys in her radius, reading a story, or chasing Addison and trying to clean. Being a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) means that I am with my girls 24/7/365. Literally. Occasionally Daddy will take Addison to the store with him, or we will have a date night, but most times I'm watching the girls. Again, I love it. Every laugh, smile, hug, kiss… Being there for them rocks.

However, Addison is now considered a toddler. I thought I understood what all that entailed. I worked at 2 daycares during high school and college after all. Toddlers are not foreign beings to me. But I didn't factor in who Addison's daddy is. Quiet, sweet (though smart-mouthed) Joshua apparently wasn't always that way. I've heard stories. His mom told me that he was kicked out of a few day care centers. Yes, KICKED OUT. I knew he was diagnosed with A.D.D. when he was little. I am also fully aware that my husband can't sit still for more than 15 minutes to save his life and even during those still minutes he pops and twitches and adjusts. But, I did not think that my sweet girls, my angels, would be his "spawn" (for lack of a better word) through and through.

Addison is like a tiny tornado. Everything she touches is disintegrated immediately into millions of pieces and scattered as she whirls all around the house, never being still. She is so curious about the world and I encourage her curiosity, but dang, I am constantly running behind her playing survivor. Seeing if I can piece things back together, calm down whatever animal she just terrified, trying to think ahead to see where she might strike next. She also is refusing to nap nowadays so I have to just let her go. A month ago Josh and I both took turns trying to calm her down but after 2 hours of screaming, everyday for a week straight, we threw in the towel. She thinks she doesn't need a nap anymore. Some days she crashes and some days she just doesn't nap.

Anyway, tornado Addison has really made landfall this week. In the 15 minutes it takes me to nurse her sister, or while I'm busy cleaning/playing/moving Loralei, Addison lets her curiosity roam. I always know I'm in for it when the house gets too quiet. That eery horror movie quiet like right before that guy reeves up the chain-saw or a clown pops out ya know?  Here's a rough list of her toddler shenanigans over the last 4 days: used Mommy's make-up brushes to clean the toilet (again), poured out majority of the salt shaker onto the table and proceeded to lick it up, choking carrying the cat around, ramming dogs with her Baby's stroller/bike, climbing everywhere and sometimes getting stuck/falling, playing in the cat water bowl, playing in the cat food, "cleaning up" the cat litter from the floor and putting it back in the box, spreading about 50 dinner napkins around the dining room, emptying the changing table of it's contents, pulling down all of the books within her reach from Mommy's giant bookshelves, shredding a roll of toilet paper with a cat, coloring where coloring shouldn't happen, throwing toys all over the room, streaking…

You see what I'm getting at here? Girl is making me look bad as a parent. Seriously. If someone stops by (and people always do) my house is a wreck, my kids are everywhere, we're always eating and someone is generally in some degree of undress. Probably doesn't even look like I do anything all day. Just sit back and let them run this place. Some part of me feels like I should have seen this coming and yet… As much as I should blame him, Josh did help make them pretty stinking cute. That's probably the only reason I don't duct tape them to chairs occasionally. All of them. Forgive me, I'm trying over here people!