Morning Rants

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I can't believe that a whole school year has gone by and I still haven't figured out how to get out of the house in the morning without losing it. I don't want to be Psycho-Mommy. I want the kids to look back at their childhood and remember how patient and loving I was, always ready to (gently) brush the rat's nest out of someone's hair, whip up homemade waffles with fresh fruit topping, or find a packing crate for a papier-mâché solar system project. Maybe I'm just being unrealistic. How can I possibly have time and patience for any of those things when I spend the entire before-school hour telling people to get dressed, brush their teeth, and eat their breakfast? You'd think they'd get so sick of hearing the orders repeated that they would just do it to shut me up. No such luck.

I've tried everything to get the train moving more smoothly. I get up before everyone else and take my 3-minute shower, and then simultaneously brush my teeth, slap on some face goo, and scrunch some anti-frizz stuff into my hair, completing my beauty routine in roughly 6 minutes. On most nights I get out the snacks, lunchboxes, backpacks, outerwear, forms, lunch money, and anything I need for work, and I lay out Adlani and Norah's clothes. I wake the kids up an hour before we have to leave the house. How is it possible that with this level of preplanning we can't get out of the house without at least one of us having a hissy-fit in the driveway?? I've tried bribery, praise, encouragement, punishment...the only thing that really seems to affect them is when I break down and cry. I just don't think it's healthy for me to be crying every morning.

A couple of days ago I was having a particularly bad morning since I hadn't gotten out the snacks the night before and I couldn't find anything Adlani would eat (since he only eats 5 things, that's not so hard to imagine). We were running VERY late, I had to be at Aliya's school by 8:45 so there was no leeway, and the morning was just not going well. While I was doing a half-dozen different things at once, Aliya sneezed and started hysterically screaming that she needed a tissue. I gave her my most incredulous look and yelled, "Get your own tissue! I am so tired of being the one-stop shop for this entire family's needs!" There was a pause and then Adlani said to himself in that cute little voice, "Hm...I don't really know what that means." It was so funny.

Adlani's usually good for lightening up the morning mood. A while back he was eating breakfast when he started yelling, "Hey Mom! Look at those bastards running up the tree!" Apparently he heard Ben call squirrels "bastards" and decided it was an interchangeable synonym. I'm not completely blameless when it comes to the foul language. A few weeks ago on another particularly bad day I lost mind in a heated moment and yelled, "Just get the f*ing cheese stick!" I'm not proud of it, but sometimes stuff slips out. A few seconds later Adlani started repeating "F*ing cheese stick. F*ing cheese stick." Great. Now my bad-mommy status will be revealed at snack time when Adlani tells his classmate, "Hey Andrew! Your mom gave you a f*ing cheese stick too! We match!"
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