Wednesday.

Win: Caroline went to bed at 11 and slept until almost 5 (then snacked and went back to sleep). I felt very well rested.

Lose: I was so sore from Stroller Strides on Tuesday I couldn’t straighten my legs properly. It feels like tiny gnomes are stabbing me in the calves with knitting needles.

Win: Evan let me change and dress him without kicking me in the face.

Lose: Evan refused to eat anything for breakfast, choosing instead to sob into the open refrigerator demanding more more more…something. I packed extra goldfish in my diaper bag.

Win: We make it to Stroller Strides (again!) on time.

Lose: I still cannot do one single sit-up during the abs part of class. Not. Even. One.

Win: Gymboree is having a FANTASTIC sale and I had a 20% off coupon. Little Evan will be sporting some absolutely fantastic plaid pants in a couple months.

Lose: Caroline thought Gymboree sucked and expressed her displeasure by screeching like a rabid hyena.

Win: I found a comfy semi-private spot in the play area to nurse the baby while Little Evan played on the slide.

Lose: Little Evan got bored with the slide after about 20 seconds and took off running into the mall. I managed to flash at least eight people, squirt milk all over my shirt, almost drop Caroline, trip on the stroller and lose a breast pad while trying to chase him down.

Win: A nice mom grabbed him and brought him back because she felt bad for me. Or maybe she was just tired of looking at my boob.

Lose: I had to wrangle TWO screaming children into their coats, into the stroller and through the mall wearing a soaking wet t-shirt. Even a deaf person could have heard us.

Win: Little Evan was so exhausted from our morning he willing ate tuna fish for lunch and then slept for 3 hours.

Double win: Caroline and I napped on the couch.

Lose: It’s 9:30 and I am SO EXHAUSTED I want to cry, but there is no way I’m going to get to bed until 11 and I’ll be up again at 5. For at least the next SIX MONTHS.

I need a vacation.

WE’VE RECENTLY STARTED HAVING A PROBLEM WITH SCREAMING IN OUR HOUSE.

Oh, sorry about that. I’m just used to having to SPEAK VERY LOUDLY TO BE HEARD.

I’ll try to use my inside voice with people who aren’t 21 months old.

Like I was shouting saying, some people (spoken: toddlers) are having trouble controlling the volume of their voice during daily activities. Drop your toy? SCREAM. Can’t reach something? SCREAM. Someone told you “no”? SCREAM. Time to get up! SCREAM. Time to play a super fun game! SCREAM. OK, dude, you can do anything you want if you’ll just shut up. SCREAM.

And then just when things are finally quiet and I get TWO SECONDS to check my email, this happens:

God Bless you Crayola for inventing washable markers

It’s exhausting. We have no real idea how to deal with the screaming or make it stop. We’ve set up a time-out spot (a pack-n-play in the dining room) but he doesn’t seem to understand the connection between the screaming and the punishment. I suppose it’s my own fault for not being as consistent with the TO’s as I should be but it can be hard to judge what infractions against the noise ban are worth punishing. I mean, he’s a kid, he makes a lot of noise. Some yelling is happy and fun. Sometimes the happy fun yelling just gets a little loud accidentally. And then sometimes what I think is just laughing and shouting turns into THE SCREAMING. Most difficult is the screaming while stuck under a nursing baby. Do I put down the baby to enforce a time-out and risk a screaming infant? Do I use some other kind of punishment? Do I have to learn to nurse in a Moby wrap and be ready to SPRING INTO ACTION at any given moment to deal with toddler angst? Because that sounds even more exhausting than just living with the screaming.

Hey, did you know parenting is HARD?

I know poor Little Evan is still adjusting to being a big brother. I know he’s having a hard time sharing his mama (evidenced by his constant requests of “down? down? down?” while patting Caroline’s bouncy seat anytime I’m holding her). I know he’s only two months away from turning 2 (sob sob sob) and this is normal behavior for that age. I know his language skills haven’t yet caught up to his emotions and that leads to a lot of frustration. But NONE OF THOSE THINGS help when your head is splitting open from the screaming. I would normally wrap up a post like this with a plea for advice but I suspect the best advice I’m going to get is “buy some earplugs and start counting down the days until he’s 3 5 16 30.”

It’s a good thing he’s so cute.

Go ahead, try to stay mad at me.

Thank you to everyone for the kind words last week after I vomited emotions all over the place. I promise next time I’ll try to find a  bucket or something instead. It’s so great to have a support system that will both sympathize with me and remind me that I’m an awesome mom doing a great job when I’m having a bad day. I was planning to write thoughtful, personal replies to each one of you, well, I didn’t. Please feel free to send me hate email. I could even cry a little if you want, I’m in that kind of place these days.

The thing is though…I’m not really an awesome mom and I don’t think I’m doing a great job. I don’t mean that in a cute “OMG I’m so fat!” fishing for compliments sort of way – I mean I am impatient and frustrated and uninvolved and feel like I struggle with good parenting more than anyone else around me. I raise my voice far more than I should, and I often let it get beyond just voice-raising to yelling. I swat Little Evan’s hands instead of firmly redirecting his attention. I spend a LOT of time online – something that’s gotten totally out of control since I’ve become a recluse who never leaves her house – instead of letting him interact with other kids and burn off his energy. Sometimes when he’s crying for no reason I give up trying to comfort him a lot sooner than I should. I make a lot of excuses not to sit on the floor and play with him (I’m too busy! I’m too pregnant! I’m too tired! I’m too sick!) but get annoyed when he tries to climb on me on the couch. And poor baby Caroline had to throw a huge fit for the past two days to get me to hold her for longer than it took to nurse. It’s just so much easier to put her in a swing and let her sleep all day while I deal with Little Evan instead of give her the attention and cuddles she deserves.

Sometimes I imagine there’s are secret Dr. Phil Family-style cameras in my house watching me spend the day parenting and more days than not I would be embarrassed to let anyone see the video. I can just picture myself sitting across from Dr. Phil himself and all he’s doing is shaking his head in disappointment. I’m being imaginary shamed by a fake TV doctor and he’s RIGHT.

SO. Instead of resolving to make dinner every night or finish two loads of laundry a day or always wear make-up or lose weight, my goal for 2011 is to be a better mom. More patient, more involved, more fun, more cuddly, and more like the mom my kids deserve. Part of that resolution includes taking better care of myself (no more ignoring symptoms and putting off appointments) because it’s so so much harder to be calm and rational in the face of a screaming toddler when your head feels like it’s going to explode and you can barely sit up. But the ultimate goal is for all of us – the whole family of four – to be happier, calmer and more loving. Because I DO love my kids and I never ever want them to doubt it for even a second. 2011 is the year I become the awesome mom I know I can be.

And then I’m going to punch imaginary Dr. Phil in his face.

I am going to make an announcement today. A revelation that might not make me any friends and may hurt my credibility as the Most Awesome Mother ever, but it’s time to stop living a lie. I cannot deceive you any longer.

I have failed at cloth diapering.

To be honest, the only reason I tried it was because it was trendy and cute and I convinced myself we could, I don’t know, take a trip to Paris or something with all the money we were going to save. Although if we DID save enough money to go to Paris I certainly wouldn’t want to carry around crap-filled pants the whole time. That right there should clue you in on how dedicated I was to cloth diapering. It was more “awwww, look at the polka dots!” and less “I love being environmentally responsible and making wise choices!” I’m kind of shallow.

It’s a shame, really, because I DO think cloth is a great way to go. I loved not having to buy disposables all the time and gloated a little bit at every person I saw with a whole cart full of Pampers at the warehouse store. Using cloth prevents so much trash and waste from going into landfills. You avoid all the weird chemicals in disposables, especially the kind that gave Little Evan a horrible rash. Using cloth does save money, especially when you use them for multiple kids – which, hey, sounds perfect for me! I have multiple kids!

But. The poop. OH MY GOD SO MUCH POOP.

My slow slide away from cloth started with the morning sickness. Getting pregnant directly coincided with Little Evan weaning, which meant no more nice, easy breastfed poops. Instead, my toddler started producing GIANT SMELLY MAN SIZED CRAP. The kind I could barely stand to be in the same zip code with, let alone carry around until I could shake it out into a toilet. And if it was…sticky? Forget about it. Anything that required the diaper sprayer also required 20 minutes of heaving into the toilet thanks to my insane sense of smell and hair-trigger gag reflex. AREN’T YOU DYING TO HEAR MORE ABOUT THIS?

So we used disposables. Then the night time peeing got totally out of hand and going back to cloth would have resulted in even MORE soaked PJ’s and sheet changes. We bought another box of Luvs. And another. Then my cloth stash started to smell sort of…weird so I had plans to strip them all and sort the ones I could use with the new baby into her dresser. I totally Googled “how to strip your cloth diapers” and everything. But I was tired and still didn’t feel so well and wasn’t really interested in doing anything that would create more laundry for myself so I never did.

Do you want to hear MORE excuses? KIDNEY STONES. Boom. Hard to enforce the cloth diaper use from the hospital.

Now, with two in diapers and no end to that scenario in sight, I feel like all I do ALL DAY is look at dirty butts. Pooping is Caroline’s only real skill right now so she’s decided to dedicate herself to what she’s good at. It is not at all uncommon for her to poop immediately after a diaper change, only to do it AGAIN after the next one. That’s three poops in less than 5 minutes, which, multiplied by 5 times a day means I would need approximately EIGHTYBAZILLIONTEEN baby-sized diapers to avoid several loads of laundry daily. It doesn’t help that Little Evan is apparently competing for the title of Poop Champion and is no longer on the twice-a-day schedule.

So. Much. Poop.

I think once Caroline gets a little older I might switch her back to cloth. I really did like it for the 4 months I did use them. And when we start *ACK* potty training Little Evan I think the cloth might be a good transition between disposables and underpants. Because I still have all these diapers. And they do save money. And they are super cute. And I do like being a cloth diaper mom.

But for now, please accept my apology for not being quite as crunchy as I used to be.

My toddler needs a job.

Have you ever been unemployed? It sucks. You sit around all day alternating between feeling miserable and sorry for yourself and sudden bursts of energy where you vow to use every second of your free time as a chance to finally organize your pantry/paint all your baseboards/read War & Peace/write those thank you notes from last Christmas. For a little while, having a MISSION and a PLAN and GOALS makes you forget how much it sucks that no one is paying you to do anything. Then you realize no one actually gives a shit if your baseboards are dirty and fall into the pit of despair and crawl back under your Snuggie to watch Judge Judy and feel sorry for yourself while moaning about how unfair everything is.

That’s what life is like every day with a 19 month old. For him, not for me. My job of simply keeping him alive is almost more than I can handle most days.

Only instead of acting out in normal ways, like excessive morning drinking and crying at the grocery store, he expresses his displeasure at feeling unimportant by dumping an entire bowl of Cheerios on the floor and stomping on them. Or by throwing my iPhone at the dog. Or by appointing himself Mayor of Trash and freaking the freak out every time anyone else tries to pick up/throw away things. OMG HOW COULD YOU MAMA THAT GRANOLA BAR WRAPPER WAS MY OWN SPESHUL FAVORITE THING??!?!

I’ve tried getting him involved in various household chores -“Honey, can you hand Mommy the silverware from the dishwasher?” “Ok, where do the dirty diapers go?” “Yah! Let’s pick up our toys! What a fun game!” – but he’s a toddler, not an idiot. He knows those are just dirty tricks to make him think he’s helping and not His Job. So far I haven’t been able to come up with anything toddler appropriate (he can’t feed the dog because he eats the dog food), time consuming (especially between the hours of 10:30 am and noon aka SCREAM’O’CLOCK), and exhausting (because, really, isn’t tiring him out the whole point?) enough to count as WORK. 19 months is too young for chores though, right? I mean besides what I’m already doing? Or did I already miss the boat on helping and now he’s going to be a lazy, selfish man-child slob his entire life?

Man, this parenting thing is super fun and stress free.

I don’t suppose there’s some sort of waiver I can sign that lets him work at Target, right? I miss the discount.