This isn't an easy post to write. A confession of sorts.
Sometimes, being a parent is just a bit shit.
It's picking up clothes and toys that have been strewn all over the house again and again. Appeals to pick them up are met with "No"
It's being punched and kicked when you need them to do something they don't want to do. What are you supposed to do? Cajoling won't work. Reason doesn't exist in a stubborn child's head.
It's knowing that you shouldn't cave in to incessant whinging for sweets and chocolate but it just goes on and on and on and on and on until you cave. You just feel so weak and useless.
It's having the food you lovingly prepare thrown on the floor or ignored, or pronounced disgusting, even when they ate all of it just last week and have barely eaten anything all day despite all your efforts.
It's being so desperate for them to just go to bed on time, just this once, so you can have dinner and sit and just relax for ten minutes that you want to cry when there are endless pleas and wailing for "one more tiny minute"
It's hating yourself for leaving them with someone else when you just need time to re-calibrate, to balance your all encompassing love for them with your desire to get to be yourself, alone, just for a little while.
It's crying because you shouted at them when, at the end of the day, they are just learning about the world, and they need you to teach them, not to shout at them because it's just so frustrating when they won't put their bloody shoes on.
All of these memes, and poems, and the guilt trips from people who don't have children and desperately want them, drilling it in to you that you should be cherishing every single moment that every time you do something might be the last, that they'll slip away and grow up before you even realise. I know that's true. I know it.
So why is it so hard?
Little boy, I love you so much, I'm so proud of you it makes my eyes sting, but being a parent is the hardest thing I have ever done.
I'm usually chirpier, check out my less maudlin posts at Mumzilla