Confessions of a single mama in Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of HAPPINESS

I’m tired of these kids!

Potty training my youngest has been incredibly hard. He’ll take his diapers off after he uses them and ask for a new one, but he hasn’t quite made the connection that he needs to use his potty instead. I’ve done the whole “sit him on the potty at interval thing”. He’ll successfully go, and he will even come and tell me that he went. We’ve done potty charts with stickers. I’ve sat him on the big potty versus his tiny kid potty. I’ve done underwear. I’ve allowed him to be completely naked. Unless you make him sit on the potty, he does not think to go himself. We’ve been at it for over a year now. I have to laugh because I thought my daughter was difficult, but she was potty trained at 2. You want to know what’s even more frustrating? Other adults acting like their parenting is perfect. As if I am not doing the best that I can. Like really, what more can I do than what I’m already doing. One of the daycares I tried to put him into even said that they couldn’t take him because he’s not potty trained. What?! He’s 2 and a half! So you mean to tell me that everyone’s 2 year olds are potty trained fully except mine? I DOUBT IT! However when I have conversations with other adults it’s always “ALL of mine were trained by 2”. Well that’s great for you, but what more can I do than what I’m already doing? I’m so glad that there are so many perfect parents out there. I’ve also been instructed to spank him when he uses the restroom on himself? Like....what? “It worked for me” they say. Well…first of all, no. Second of all, I don’t want him to associate pain with going to the bathroom. Scare him so bad that he holds it (I honestly already think he holds it just so he can go IN the diaper).

Let’s also just talk about how hard it is to get him dressed these days. It’s like WWE in my household. Right now, he loves to run away from me. I have to chase him and hold him down, and then when I grab him he makes his body go limp and doesn’t put toward any effort to lifting any limbs to help put his clothes on. Just dead body weight. Let’s not even begin to discuss his hair. Super curly and eats up all moisture. HE HATES having his hair combed. It’s so tiring. He’s always so worn out from crying when I’m done. That is mostly due to the fact that I have to stand up and chase him and hold him down just to get the tiny knots and fuzz and lint and dog hair and whatever else out of his head. My mom always makes these comments like “he doesn’t do that for me” well, GREAT! He’s with me 99% of the time, and just because you don’t experience it that 1% he’s with you does not make it that he doesn’t do this. HE ABSOLUTELY DOES! Don’t even get me started on the fact that there are things my kids will throw a fit not to eat, but then go to my moms house and suddenly it’s their favorite. I’ll tell her that they don’t eat something and she’ll say “Since when?” SINCE EVERYDAY THEY LIVE WITH ME!

I’ve FINALLY gotten everything squared away for my son to be in daycare come Monday. I’ll be back to work by Wednesday. I’m so excited for him to go to daycare and be around other kids his age. Maybe it will wear him out and he won’t be ready to stay up all night anymore. Lately he’s been staying up all night despite being put to bed. He’ll come to my bedroom all times of the night, and I FEEL SO GUILTY because I’ll turn the TV on in their room and go back to bed. He falls back asleep, but not this morning apparently because I woke up around 6 for some time to myself and to write on here, and guess who immediately opened their bedroom door? It’s like he has a 6th sense or something. Anyway, I’m not excited to now have to wrangle two alligators in the morning before work, but it will be nice for everyone to have something to do and keep busy. The daycare has also agreed to keep my daughter for the 3 weeks before her school starts.

Speaking of school, it is interesting to me that no one is planning for lockdowns or anything. No masks required in school. No talks about plans in place if things were to go LEFT. I haven’t mentioned this here, but I work in education. I work in an Elementary school. I will be wearing a mask. My child will be wearing a mask at her new school as well. I have no issues wearing a mask. My daughter has had to wear one the entire summer for camp anyway, but when I get all of these back to school emails about everyone not needing to wear masks, and then on the news I’m hearing the exact opposite. It’s quite frightening honestly. However, I can only control myself and what we do in my family, so we’re going to be wearing masks.

My daughters last day of camp is today. On Wednesday, her behavior at camp was so great that they gifted her with a princess crown for how well behaved she was. I am so proud of her. Yesterday I was called to come and pick her up due to her having a tummy ache and not feeling well. She said it was because of her medicine (this is why giving her medicine and explaining everything is so hard with her because she embellishes and knows what to say and while that IS a side effect, she also knows that and knows that she can say it at any time and because I don’t know if it’s true or not I’ll take her seriously. The same with any of her other made up “ailments” (I think I mentioned this in an earlier entry before she even started medicine last week)). Anyway, I went and picked her up. I also noticed that she had hardly drank the water from her water bottle. Not only is it 100+ degrees here outside, she HAS to drink water as the side effects of the medicine are much worse if she does not. I let her use my large water bottle BECAUSE of this (and because at camp they were not letting her keep refilling her smaller one). Anyway, magically her stomach ache, headache and whatever else went away when I told her we were going to the park. We went to a park AND a splash park afterward. It was so HOT out, and probably was not a good idea to even attempt it, but on a good note we had the entire park to ourselves because no one else was brave enough to bring their kids in those temperatures. HAHA. She had a pretty rough evening listening. She was whiny and argumentative and talking to me like I’m not a human being. I love her.

However, I was able to snag a moment to myself. I put on my bathing suit and sun hat, grabbed my big floatie and a book and got into our little 10 X 30 pool and just floated around and read. That was my first time in the pool by myself and I LOVED IT. Why didn’t I do this sooner? Because my kids would be inside running loose like maniacs, but I was able to keep them occupied just long enough yesterday. It was great. It was a WIN for me.