Guilty

Ever have a moment when you feel like you are the worst parent ever?  The older my children get, especially Max, the more and more worried I become that I am not living up to be the best parent I can be.  Max remembers EVERYTHING! He can tell you what happened 2 weeks ago in detail.  So the days of saying "don't worry about that little slip up, he won't remember it by tomorrow" are completely over.  If you tell him you are going to do something, you better do it!

With 3 children under the age of 4 I would be lying if I didn't say that I get pretty stressed sometimes.  Everyday I have to wake up thinking only half of what I wanted to get done will  get done, nothing will go as planned, and I'm gonna be a little tired.  Then I have to be ok with that.  Most days I am completely ok with that, but every now and then we will have a day that everything has to go as planned, such as a dr visit, travel days, or something like family visits.  On these type of days I tend to not have as much patience as I should and that is when I feel like the worst parent ever.  Getting anything done quickly with 3 children ( 2 of which I like to call non-walkers...Yes Jerry can walk, but that doesn't mean he should, his level of distraction is dangerous) is impossible.  Here is the typical situation that tends to happened every single time when are on a time crunch.

Ok we have 10 minutes to get loaded in the car and driving out of the carport.  Kids are dressed, diaper bag packed, and I even have my keys in my hands.  Ok time for shoes.  My children HATE shoes (just like me ) and we prefer to be barefooted all the time and we are unless we have to go to town.  Time to find the shoes and not just any shoes, Max only has one pair he will wear and Jerry is the same way.  After we search under couches, beds, closets, we finally realize the shoes are in the car because the boys always take their shoes off as soon as we drive on our driveway ( so really this is my fault because I always forget we leave them in the car.)

So now everyone has shoes on and we have about 5 minutes to get everyone buckled in, which would be plenty of time for normal children, but not mine.  A strange thing happens when it is time to get in the car.  Max and Jerry can both run and move at rapid speeds, but for some reason when it is time to load up in the car they both move at the speed of an amputee or geriatric person. And this is when I start feeling like a terrible mama.  After a couple of times saying "come on guys we have to move super fast" of even trying to make a game of it telling them to "Fly like superman" or "hop like bunnies" into the car and they are still slowly climbing into the car.  I mean so slow that I have had time to carry Abilene over to the other side of the car, buckle her in, tuck all her blankets in and attach her pacifier, and they are still either climbing in the car or just standing in the aisle of the car and not sitting in their seats.  I HATE yelling.  But for some reason this situation just brings it out in me.  We are running late to something we can't be late for, so I just yell "GET IN THE CAR NOW!" And of course this doesn't even work because they just stare at me like "duh, mom I working on it."  Trying to cool off I will go and lock the house and pray that they are sitting in their seats so I can buckle them in....of course they never are.  With shaking hands and fighting everything I have in me to not grab their little butts and slam them into their plush car seat all I can do is is yell "Why are you so slow?!  Get your shit together and get in your seat!!"

Ok great now I have just said one of their favorite words "shit" and they just love to show me how they can say it at the worst times and I have yelled at my kids twice in less than 10 minutes.  Worst parent award right here.  Then Max looks at me with sad eyes and says "mama please talk nicely to me, its hurts my feelins."  Which is something I tell him all the time when he talks meanly to anyone (which he obviously learned from me) and it always works he immediately feels bad.  I feel so bad for what I did and start to cry because I never want to hurt my children's feelings, I'm over tired, overwhelmed, and lets not forget now we are late.  I crawl in the car give everyone hugs, tell them I am so sorry and I was very wrong to talk to them that way and its never ok to do that.  Finally get everyone buckled in and then I finally get in the car, look at the clock and we are of course leaving late, look in the mirror to back up and I have mascara lines down my face from crying.  Take a few more minutes to fix that and turn on some happy music.  Then I spend the rest of the drive praying for more patience with my children and then thinking how early I need to get up to avoid this whole situation next time.

Now that Max remembers everything, I know he is going to remember this and I can't get it out of my mind.  I set a terrible example, lost my temper, used a word I shouldn't, and probably looked like a psycho in the process. From yelling to crying in less than 2 minutes...psycho!  So the next time Max looses his temper, can I really punish him when I did the same thing?  How do you keep from loosing your temper and running out of patience with your children?  And when you inevitably do, how do you explain that and make up for it?