The Circus Came To Town

So here is a post about meltdowns.

On Saturday, I gave Terry the day off. He headed down to Lake Washington to hang out with a friend. I went into Bellevue to the mall to let Max get his wiggles out at the play area on the 3rd floor. Then I took him to the Lego store for a treat for being such a good boy over the last few weeks. The day was great! Max, Isabel and I stopped at the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. We headed home and he fell asleep in the car, so did Isabel, of course.

My first dilema was getting 2 sleeping children out of the car. Who do I leave inside the car while I take the other one up? After considering it the entire drive home, I took Isabel up first and left her in the carseat. Then I went down for Max. Dilema solved. I was feeling pretty good about myself.

Max was down for the count, Isabel was a different story all together. She chose not to take a nap and stayed up the whole time. There went my nap opportunity. It was right about the time that Max woke up that Isabel finally fell asleep, for 30 minutes.

Fast forward to 6:00pm

So now I am trying to get dinner going when Max starts to have a meltdown. The reason for which I have no idea...then Isabel starts crying. I don't mean the kind of, I am tired or I am hungry crying, but the shrieking out of pain from gas kind of crying. So there I sat in between 2 wailing children, dinner boiling over, and here comes the cat adding her voice the litany.

I lost my cookies to. I had to walk upstairs, leaving Max by himself, put Isabel down in her bed and walk into the bathroom and close the door for a minute. I felt like a horrible parent, but in that moment there was nothing else I could do. I took a few deep breaths and cried. I know this will get easier. I know it was just an off moment in time. As a wise friend told me, "tomorrow is another day." At some point it will be a better day, it will get easier.

When Terry got home that night, after Max went to bed, I finished feeding Isabel and handed her over to him to burp and put her down to sleep. I rolled over in bed and promptly went to sleep myself. It was an exhausting day. Good and bad, but I wouldn't change it for anything. I am writing this down so that I don't forget that even though things were hard, I made it through and I am a better mother for it.

 All I can do is love my children and tell them that I love them each and everyday.