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As I watched probably my worst parenting fail so far, unfolding before me this week, I sighed, and wondered if I’m just one massive muckup at this parenting thing. You see, neither of my children will eat breakfast-my every attempt to get something inside them is always met with the thrusting of said offending sustenance back in my face with the force of a fleet of rockets being launched into space. Closely followed with shouts and cries that I swear sound like ‘poison,’ ‘eject from area, eject from area,’ or maybe that’s just me having
SelfishMother.com
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auditory hallucinations because the laws of nature clearly state that at 8am, I really shouldn’t have been up for three hours already.
So, they don’t eat breakfast, which means that by mid morning, they are munching harder than teenage stoners on their first trip to Amsterdam. But we had a trip planned this particular morning, and I didn’t want them to just be spending the whole time resembling starved pigs, who have just been given access to a full trough. I was really pushing the breakfast thing, and it involved a frustrating carousel around
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the kitchen cupboards, opening each one multiple times, trying to tempt its contents into their mouths, and failing hugely.
On the third rotation of musical kitchen cupboards, I was starting to feel very much like I was about to lose my shit temper. That’s when the Pom Bears and Kinder chocolate stick things fell from one of the cupboards, where they usually remain hidden for only the most intense of emergency bribe situations. Obviously, the children were all over them, snarling and salivating like zombies who have found the last remaining bit of
SelfishMother.com
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human flesh left on the planet, to eat. I had no fight left in me by this time, so I gave in, and let them eat crisps and chocolate for breakfast. I started to imagine my headstone when I died. I imagined it would read something along the lines of ‘she was ok at some things, but as a mother, she was just One Big Fail.’
I’d also been trying to start potty training with my soon to be 3&1/2 year old, for the last week. Well, I’ve been trying on and off for ages, but his general plan of action to resist this forward step in his development, is
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to scream until he’s sick, and I am guilt tripped into putting a nappy back on him, and he will then promptly drop a huge poo in it, and demand that I change him immediately. So, award winning breakfast finished, I resolved that today would be the day! He wasn’t going to win! So I put his pants on, he screamed until he was sick, and I, ummm, put the nappy back on…
Off we go on our trip out. The children with sugar and grease circulating their systems, really setting them up for the day, and my dreams of a potty trained child now drowning in a
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sea of vom and endless Pampers Baby Dry. But, I’d managed a hair cut earlier in the week! My first for two years! And I was also trying out a new colour-and I really liked it! So at least my hair looked all shiny and polished for the first time in what seemed liked ever. I was off to a ‘do’ you see, at the weekend. It was black tie, and there was going to be lots of champagne, so I wanted to look my best. I picked the littlest monster up at one point, to do an obligatory bum sniff, when the aroma of stale brie and cabbage had reached my nose, and
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he swooped in on me, like the flesh eating zombie he is, and bit my fucking neck. He actually held on while I tried to prize him off. Between trying to conceal my yelps of pain, because we were in public, and I didn’t want people to start referring to my child as ‘that Hannibal Lecter child,’ I hazily wondered if I had now watched so many vampire shows that I now lived in some altered reality where by some strange process of metamorphosis, my child had become an actual vampire. When I eventually prized him off, I expected a gaping wound, with
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spurting blood everywhere, from the level of pain I was in. But I had just a huge red mark, already purpling into a bruise, with specks of blood-not the full gush of a burst artery I had been expecting. However, I quickly remembered the do. I now couldn’t attend and proudly show off my freshly coiffed bonce, I had to work out some way of hiding what now resembled a hickey. Great, the do of the year, and I would be sporting a tramp stamp.
Later on at home, I was trying to counterbalance my feelings of extreme failure, by noting in my head the things
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that made me a good mum. In the middle of this, the eldest child asked, out of the blue: ‘Mummy, what do you do all day?’ Ahem, I’m sorry, what???? When have you seen all my friends who don’t have children? How did they find you? How have they infiltrated your mind with nonsense that mums have nothing to do all day???? Before I could answer, in the style of Gwen from Dinopaws, he quickly chimed in with a sing song ‘oohhhh! I know I know I know!! You wash our bottoms, then you go to bed!’
Now what was I saying about trying to recount all
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the nice things I do for them….
Thanks for reading!
xoxo
SelfishMother.com
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Lucy - 8 Apr 16
As I watched probably my worst parenting fail so far, unfolding before me this week, I sighed, and wondered if I’m just one massive muckup at this parenting thing. You see, neither of my children will eat breakfast-my every attempt to get something inside them is always met with the thrusting of said offending sustenance back in my face with the force of a fleet of rockets being launched into space. Closely followed with shouts and cries that I swear sound like ‘poison,’ ‘eject from area, eject from area,’ or maybe that’s just me having auditory hallucinations because the laws of nature clearly state that at 8am, I really shouldn’t have been up for three hours already.
So, they don’t eat breakfast, which means that by mid morning, they are munching harder than teenage stoners on their first trip to Amsterdam. But we had a trip planned this particular morning, and I didn’t want them to just be spending the whole time resembling starved pigs, who have just been given access to a full trough. I was really pushing the breakfast thing, and it involved a frustrating carousel around the kitchen cupboards, opening each one multiple times, trying to tempt its contents into their mouths, and failing hugely.
On the third rotation of musical kitchen cupboards, I was starting to feel very much like I was about to lose my shit temper. That’s when the Pom Bears and Kinder chocolate stick things fell from one of the cupboards, where they usually remain hidden for only the most intense of emergency bribe situations. Obviously, the children were all over them, snarling and salivating like zombies who have found the last remaining bit of human flesh left on the planet, to eat. I had no fight left in me by this time, so I gave in, and let them eat crisps and chocolate for breakfast. I started to imagine my headstone when I died. I imagined it would read something along the lines of ‘she was ok at some things, but as a mother, she was just One Big Fail.’
I’d also been trying to start potty training with my soon to be 3&1/2 year old, for the last week. Well, I’ve been trying on and off for ages, but his general plan of action to resist this forward step in his development, is to scream until he’s sick, and I am guilt tripped into putting a nappy back on him, and he will then promptly drop a huge poo in it, and demand that I change him immediately. So, award winning breakfast finished, I resolved that today would be the day! He wasn’t going to win! So I put his pants on, he screamed until he was sick, and I, ummm, put the nappy back on…
Off we go on our trip out. The children with sugar and grease circulating their systems, really setting them up for the day, and my dreams of a potty trained child now drowning in a sea of vom and endless Pampers Baby Dry. But, I’d managed a hair cut earlier in the week! My first for two years! And I was also trying out a new colour-and I really liked it! So at least my hair looked all shiny and polished for the first time in what seemed liked ever. I was off to a ‘do’ you see, at the weekend. It was black tie, and there was going to be lots of champagne, so I wanted to look my best. I picked the littlest monster up at one point, to do an obligatory bum sniff, when the aroma of stale brie and cabbage had reached my nose, and he swooped in on me, like the flesh eating zombie he is, and bit my fucking neck. He actually held on while I tried to prize him off. Between trying to conceal my yelps of pain, because we were in public, and I didn’t want people to start referring to my child as ‘that Hannibal Lecter child,’ I hazily wondered if I had now watched so many vampire shows that I now lived in some altered reality where by some strange process of metamorphosis, my child had become an actual vampire. When I eventually prized him off, I expected a gaping wound, with spurting blood everywhere, from the level of pain I was in. But I had just a huge red mark, already purpling into a bruise, with specks of blood-not the full gush of a burst artery I had been expecting. However, I quickly remembered the do. I now couldn’t attend and proudly show off my freshly coiffed bonce, I had to work out some way of hiding what now resembled a hickey. Great, the do of the year, and I would be sporting a tramp stamp.
Later on at home, I was trying to counterbalance my feelings of extreme failure, by noting in my head the things that made me a good mum. In the middle of this, the eldest child asked, out of the blue: ‘Mummy, what do you do all day?’ Ahem, I’m sorry, what???? When have you seen all my friends who don’t have children? How did they find you? How have they infiltrated your mind with nonsense that mums have nothing to do all day???? Before I could answer, in the style of Gwen from Dinopaws, he quickly chimed in with a sing song ‘oohhhh! I know I know I know!! You wash our bottoms, then you go to bed!’
Now what was I saying about trying to recount all the nice things I do for them….
Thanks for reading!
xoxo
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I am a frazzled, and slightly lost mum to two young boys, finding my place and way through motherhood with plenty of humour, cheese and wine. I have an antisocial addiction to Netflix, and live in Bristol-one of my favourite cities in the whole world, when I actually get to go out and enjoy it! I blog about my massive fails, comical daily struggles, and some serious stuff, at www.thismumslife.com