Reality Check

I hate when blogs are all fluff and no reality. All they do is put out a fake sense of reality to others, which can lead to feelings of inadequacy! I hope mine doesn't ever come off that way. I have problems, too, and many moments I'm not too proud of. Some of my "moments" create such fear in my children they freeze as if afraid to talk, move, etc. Tonight was one of them. Being a Mom is about the most thankless job in the universe. A child asks for clean underwear, and "poof" when they get home there is a stack nicely folded on their bed. A child says they are hungry and "poof" a sandwich appears on the table. A child needs their hair done and "poof" her hair is in a creative new hairdo that Mom has spent time looking up to keep things "fresh". It's not like my children don't say thank you, because they do. But like I always tell them, "it's your actions that show gratitude, not your words!" So tonight, I'm sitting down at the kitchen table helping Boston and Aubrie with their homework, after a long tiresome day of hearing Sophia cry for almost an hour before she finally went down for a nap, and also dealing with my wonderful Aunt I like to call "Flo". Instead of my children, graciously and tentatively, listening to me as I show them how to understand the concept of rounding, or how they need to correct their penmanship if they want their teacher to accept their homework, I get complaints and whining. Boston is whining because he doesn't want to rewrite his sentence, and pushes his paper across the table. So I put him in timeout, and then quickly tries to change his tune before I follow through, which I did. Then, as I try to give Aubrie some more examples to work on, so she can really "understand" a particular problem, she complains that I wrote on her paper and starts to erase. Fed up with the complaining I go to grab her pencil. forgetting she was erasing, and then I realize my finger feels like it's on fire. I look up (or down, I really can't remember) and see the pencil hanging from my finger, and then I look at Aubrie's face, and she says, "Mom, that must hurt!" Then I realized what happened. OOOUUUCCHHH! Then I lose it! I started screaming things like, I'm sick of helping you guys and getting complaining in return, etc, etc. and then I run upstairs as I'm tearing off my apron and slam my bedroom door (I don't know where my kids get that? J/K I never do that, really!). I could tell that Ben was really concerned because he comes up, after giving me a few minutes (smart man) to check my hand. There are still pencil marks, and my finger was so swollen (good thing I thought to take off my wedding ring). He covers me up and turns down the blinds, and then takes off with the kids (to get some dinner) and he didn't come home until their bedtime. About an hour before he returned, I was getting a little bored and missing the kids. I sat there thinking how funny it was that I had it up to "here" with them, and within such a short time I was missing them terribly. Isn't Motherhood funny that way! So now there is proof that my life isn't always a walk through the park, not that you thought that anyway, if you even know me!!!