We all have bad days. Days that make you feel like dropping everything and running for cover to a place where you didn’t have to deal with things you don’t have the fortitude to deal with. Days where you feel like screaming melodramatically “I’m just not strong enough”.

I hate bad days.

Back when I was working, bad days came in the form of having to deal with a sick kid on the very day I had an important event, one I spent weeks working my ass off on. Like come on, what are the odds my baby wakes up with a temperature on big-deal-event-day. You have the million-dollar choice of requesting for urgent leave and watching your weeks of planning (and possibly your job) go up in flames or ditching the kid and hating every single moment of your day at work, wishing it would go up in flames because WORK SUCKS and you’re a terrible mother etc etc.

Or when I get a work call at 3 in the morning with a voice at the other end telling me to get my ass out of bed and into office by 5.30am. Don’t ask.

Or when I spend every day of every week resenting the fact that I’m writing retarded press releases and reports for a bunch of folks who don’t even bother to pretend to read them, and then having to be told I can’t write to save my life.

I thought that when I left my job, that would be the last I saw of bad days.

Without having to go into the debate of whether it sucks more to be a full-time working mom or a work-from-home mom, I’d like to state for the record that bad days don’t go away even when you don’t have to put on a proper shirt and step into the office. Whether you work from home or in the office, a deadline’s a deadline and work still needs to be done. Which is kind of hard to do when your kid decides he’s having a bad day as well. And at least, when I’m at the office, I get to sit in relative quiet in my cubicle to bash out the work.

Right now, my working hours take place from 2-4pm when the kids nap and after 9pm when the kids are in bed. On a good day, that is. So when the kids don’t nap, it’s a bad day. When they don’t nap and spend that two hours whining and screaming, it’s an even worse day. When they spend that time making your existence miserable while you’re on the phone trying to get some urgent work done, it’s a bloody nightmare.

Because on top of being stressed and flustered, you get all emotional and guilt-ridden for being a bad mom who doesn’t deserve to stay home with the kids and how maybe they’re better off at childcare after all.

I told myself that the kids were supposed to come first no matter what. That I would be patient and not lose my shit. I had all these images of huggy-kissy time with smily kids in slow motion and soaring music in the background. But you know how life likes to make a mockery of your best intentions? It was like “Ok, here’s a scene right out from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Not so picture perfect now, is it?”

After my fair share of bad days, I wish I could say that I’m an expert on how to roll with the punches. Except that I’m not. But what I do now is to take a deep breath, make myself a steaming cup of hot chocolate, hide in the kitchen where the kids can’t enter, close my eyes and drink. Then suck it up and wait for the day to be over. And this thing called tomorrow, it’s usually better.

With that, I leave you with my favorite Shakespearean quote of all time. “Come what come may, time and the hour runs through the roughest day.”

Touche, William.

I need a happy picture today because its been one crazy week. (Which one isnt, right? Do I hear an amen, mommas?) But it’s always exceptionally tough when the kids are sick. Don’t ask me how I survived the last 3 days with Tru quarantined at home, spreading his germs and general irritability. He’s like my Siamese twin whenever he’s sick, extra clingy and stuck to my hip all day. Now that they’re finally getting better, the husband is down and I’m barely holding out.

I’m glad today is Thursday, because that means my weekend starts tomorrow-ish. The whole family is going to gather for my Grandma’s birthday bash (a 3-day affair) so that’s going to be fun. Plenty of people to fuss over the kids while we sneak off to chill out by the beach. Or catch a movie. Or sleep. I miss sleep. Sleep is good.

Yesterday, baby girl woke up early from her nap because of the sniffles, feeling all miserable and looking the part. I’ll admit, I was pretty bummed because it was supposed to be my only clear-my-crazy-schedule quiet moment in the day, on the very day that I had a ton of emails to answer, work to clear, laundry to fold and of course, who’s forgetting the mountain of unwashed dishes that are threatening to eat up my kitchen.

But there she was, looking at me with those baby eyes, like “I need you now mommy!” which is my cue to drop everything and snuggle in bed with her until she feels better.

These are what I call crunch-time moments, the motherhood-defining ones. Moments like these, I literally stop and remind myself why I’m at home in the first place. Sure, I could make better use of my time to earn a few extra quid or keep the house spick and span. Or I could be a mom and be there for them when they need me now because I know in a couple of years, they’re not going to want to snuggle and it will be weird for me to blow raspberries on their thighs and kiss them all over a thousand times.

All this time I’m thinking that I make them feel better but truth is, they make me feel a whole lot better too.

Good cop, bad cop is a strategy we use all the time in disciplining the kids. From the onset, we agreed that we’ll rotate the roles so that it’s fair and we both get to be the good cop at some point. Because nobody wants to be the bad cop. Besides sociopaths, that is. Or masochists with a sadistic streak. But well, neither of us fall into those categories.

Unfortunately, it’s becoming quite apparent that daddy is emerging as the resident bad cop. Why? Because mommy has no backbone and she can’t keep a straight face when it comes to discipline. Also, it’s terribly weird to talk about myself in the third person.

The kids seem to sense that weakness and they have been exploiting it. They do their cute I’m-so-sorry-didn’t-mean-to-do-it move and I feel bad about being upset because they’re obviously just babies and innocent and all puppy dog eyes looking at me. That makes me immediately forget about how they spat out food all over the floor 30 seconds ago. WHILE I’M STILL STANDING IN THE SPITTLE. I’m such a cliche.

So now whenever we do good cop bad cop, Kelvin gets to be the bad cop while I dangle bribes of ice-cream and Yakult. It never works though and I don’t even know why I bother.

Me: Tru, if you finish your food mommy will let you have a scoop of ice-cream.

Tru: ICE-CREAM!!! GIVE ME ICE-CREAM! GIVE ME GIVE ME!!

Me: I meant you have to FINISH your food first.

Tru: I’m all done. Give me ice-cream!!!

Me: No, you’re not done. You can’t be done if you haven’t even started.

Tru: ICE CREAM!!!!

That goes on for a while until he grabs his head and slumps onto the table, which is his sign for “I don’t care about your stupid ice-cream anyway. It’s not worth having to swallow this broccoli for.”

That’s me wasting 15 minutes of my life trying to bargain with a two-year-old.

So it’s the cue for bad cop to step in.

Kelvin: Tru, open your mouth, say ahhhhh.

Tru: No, don’t like.

Kelvin: Do you like the naughty corner?

Tru: No, don’t like.

Kelvin: I’m going to count to three and if you don’t eat by the time I get to 3, you know where you’re going to. 1…2…

And it works like a charm. Once in a while he tries his luck and ends up in the naughty corner. Daddy says it’s about consistency, which I have none of. I keep trying to find excuses to cut him some slack, to not have to put him in the naughty corner because it breaks momma’s tender little heart to see him cry.

If this goes on I’ll be the kind of mother that has to leave the discipline to their husbands and the best they can do is pull out their killer phrase “wait till daddy gets home” whenever the kids start becoming bratty. But that won’t work very well for me because by the time daddy gets home, I’ll have a VERY LONG list of things, some of which I’m likely to forget.

I think I better start lessons on being a bad cop before Kirsten gets smarter and I get eaten alive by TWO kids with innocent baby eyes.

Ever wish you could redo certain days all over again? I try not to go into that mode because I’m all about carpe diem and hakuna matata. Life ain’t perfect, we make mistakes, we learn, move on, I get that. But it doesn’t stop me from wishing I could have a do-over sometimes. Especially now that I’m a mom, I feel like I have less room for error because I don’t just affect me when I mess up.

I was planning to have a happy post today but I’m just feeling a little bummed from last night, so indulge me. Normal programming will resume tomorrow.

Since the last time they were sick, the kids have been waking up several times every night, wanting to migrate to our bed. We thought it was a phase that would pass on its own, but it’s just been getting worse. Mostly, Tru wakes up screaming for milk and mommy’s pillow, which wakes Kirsten up and that’s when the fun begins. Just when I was starting to enjoy my uninterrupted sleep at night.

At first, we caved and let them sleep on our bed because it was the easiest way to make them go back to sleep, but it was a temporary solution which resulted in terrible sleep for us anyway. The past few nights, we decided it was time to retrain them to sleep in their own room. This was a far more difficult process which involved a good hour of resistance before they would fall back asleep. We also decided to cut out the midnight milk feeds because it was more of a comfort snack than a hunger cue. In fact, most of the time, they would drink 2 ounces and refuse the rest.

Every night, we would wait for the dreaded screamfest to begin and like clockwork, they gladly delivered.

Last night, it was more of the same. I was stoned out of my mind and I slowly shuffled my feet into their room, obviously in a less-than-spritely mood. My strategy was simple. Kirsten was the easy one, she usually fell back sleep within 5 minutes of patting and then all I had to do was sit and wait for Tru to toss and turn for the next 45 minutes.

Except that this time, baby girl was the one screaming and refusing to sleep. I tried singing, whispering, humming, patting, carrying, rocking and none of it worked.

30 minutes in, I was like “baby girl, this is very bad. You got to help me here, I need to see you TRY.” She closed her eyes for a minute, grabbed her duck and started whimpering. Ok, some progress, I thought. But this went on for a while, and my back was numb from all that bending over her cot. Finally I picked her up, brought her over to Kel and went out to make her milk.

Good thing daddy had the sense to check her diaper because her poop as all caked up and her ass was bleeding from nappy rash. I mean, there were real specks of blood and it was red as a baboon’s bottom.

daddy knows best

The feeling I had when I came back into the room was possibly the worst I’ve ever felt. It was a total rookie mistake. Always check for poop first, but I didn’t, I got careless. There I was, patting her bleeding bum, and all upset because it wasn’t working. Worst thing was, baby girl really tried, just like I asked. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep even though her ass was on fire. Seriously, if there as blood coming out from my ass, I wouldn’t be as obliging.

After we cleaned her up, I held her and told her momma was real sorry. I think she understood because she grabbed my finger tightly with her tiny hands and fell asleep.

Of all the dumbass things I’ve done in my life, I think this easily makes it to the top. So excuse me, I need to wallow and feel awful for just a little while more.

I used to hate it when my Literature lecturers told me that “there’s no such thing as a right answer, as long as you’re persuasive enough“. Because evidently there was. If there wasn’t, I’d be scoring an “A” for my thesis on why we need to set fire to Jane Eyre (the book, not the person). Along the way, I figured out the right answers by sneaking into the staff lounge and getting myself one of those model essays.

I blame it on my compulsive disorder. I need to do things right, whatever right means. I was the kind of kid that colors within the lines and follows all the rules, you know, the head prefect sort with my horn-rimmed spectacles and geeky hair. Freestyling, that’s just not my style.

I’ve learned to be a lot less anal retentive but the compulsiveness, it’s hard to shake off.

They told me it’s the same with parenting. “There’s no such thing as a right parenting style, just what’s right for your kid”. I didn’t buy that, so I was always searching for that elusive right answer. What to feed your child, where to get the best educational material, what toys to get, how to make them sleep and so on. Some answers were backed up by scientific data and others had raving testimonials from expert moms but a lot of it was confusing and contradictory and they all just messed with my head.

So we mostly learned through trial and error. Like one time I fed Truett some peanuts because he was screaming his head off during a wedding dinner and he almost choked and died until I stuck my fingers down his throat and dug it out. Lesson: always have baby bites on hand.

It doesn’t help that this time, I’m not graded by qualified teachers but by the army of perfect moms who always manage to look like they have it all together.

There’s something about being a mom that makes you terribly paranoid and competitive. You’re always peering over your shoulder to see what other moms are doing. Maybe it’s because an entire life is at stake here. Maybe because there really is no right answer and we are all desperately hoping that we didn’t mess up. Once in a while, I chance upon one of those stepford moms and it’s like I’m back to High School all over again.

Sometimes I bring Kirsten out for breakfast in the morning and in order to buy time while I eat, I feed her whatever I’m having, which includes McD’s or fried noodles (but no peanuts, I’m a fast learner). In between my mouthfuls of processed junk food, I turn to the table beside me and there she is, with her perfect hair and neatly arranged tiny boxes of organic celery sticks and hummus. Which is right about the point I start to pretend to search my bag, knowing full well that all I’ll find is a half-eaten hash brown.

Sometimes I put both my kids in the same stroller while I blitz from point to point without strapping them down.

Sometimes I put my kids in front of the telly while I prepare their meals.

Sometimes I say no way more times than I should because that’s the obvious answer to “can I lick the underside of my shoe?”

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I won’t have all the answers. In fact, most of the answers I have are likely to be wrong but that’s the fun of parenting. I’m the boss of them and there’s no one to tell me I suck. Well, except for the moms who do it without saying a word.