Mom Guilt

So, I had a bit of a rough weekend with my babe. She seems to turn into a post-nap monster lately. Before naps shes her sweet, happy-go-lucky self. We went to a few local parks, played on the playgrounds and hunted for painted rocks. We watched Mickey  Mouse Clubhouse, played with her dollies and visited with MeMaw & Papa. After naps, that was a different story. The whiney, attached to mommy's hip monster was born.

For only being roughly 20 months old, she has pretty good dictation and is easy to understand when she asks for something but if you can't figure out what she's asking for you can tell her to show you and she will. This weekend, if I didn't get it right on the first attempt at translation, she LOST HER FREAKIN MIND. The boogers would flood out, as the crocodile tears covered the floor.

"NO, MOMMY!" enter the floor stomping and flailing of the arms, "NO CHEESE!"

"Do you want white Cheese, but not orange?"

"O-TAY!!!!!!" Sniffle, sniffle.

I felt like a big-ole-mommy-failure.

I felt even worse Saturday night when the husband ended up staying overnight at a friends trailer at Lancaster Speedway. I'm having a flare in pain (happens almost routinely with the change of season) so I had taken a muscle relaxer thinking all was going to go smoothly and I'd be able to get some restful sleep. Boy, was I wrong!

Shelby was up at midnight with zero interest in going back to sleep. Our lab, Milo, started singing me the song of his people, asking to go out shortly after Shelby got up. He had stolen a  saran wrapped chocolate chip cookie off the kitchen counter earlier in the day. He has Exocrine Pancreatic insufficiency so he can't digest food if we don't first put a digestive enzyme on it. Needless to say, the cookie monster came to visit him in the middle of the night, he wanted his cookie back.

Between trying to get Shelby to go back to "night-night," and getting up several times to let the dog in and back out, again, sleep wasn't on the agenda. Patience was also not easily found that night.

"Mommy, ty-ty?"

"YES! Shelby, mommy ty-ty, go back to sleep!!!!

"Mommy...Mickey moose?"

"NO! GO TO SLEEP!"

I didn't yell per say, but it wasn't said sweetly either. My patience had run dry probably around the second time I had to get up to let the dog out to visit with the cookie monster.

I try not to lose my patience with Shelby because I know she will only be this little once and one day, probably sooner than I would like, I will crave the days when all she wanted was her mommy. Hence the guilt train that rolled in on Sunday morning.  

I was reminded, via a fellow insta-mommy, that we are allowed to feel frustrated. We all have our good days & our bad days, but the goal is to have far more good days than bad. I love my Shell Bell, and she knows it because I show her every day (and tell her probably too many times a day) but thankfully she won't remember the snippiness I spat at her on Saturday night.

Anyways, mom guilt is definitely a thing so I took her to the playground to make for my lack of patience Saturday night.

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