This Mother's Day, like most when you have young children, did not go according to plan. Photo / Getty images
This Mother's Day, like most when you have young children, did not go according to plan. Photo / Getty images
Mother's Day - our house, Tauranga:
I wake up a bit dusty after a few wines the night before. I enter the kitchen about to start the morning routine coffee-making.
My son, two, and daughter, four, come running in with presents. My husband calls out: "They're for Mumma, give them to her."
Our boy's shoulders drop and his face contorts as he crumples to the floor. No amount of saying he can open them consoles him. He rolls around on the floor sobbing.
His sister is whining because... couldn't tell you. The entire world is wrong. It's cold, it's hot, it's too cold to get dressed, the clothes are wrong, they feel scratchy.
Can you kids not just get dressed and get into the %$#@ing car for once?
We were about to drive over to the Mount as we do most weekend mornings so I can go up - alone.
As our boy rolls around sobbing, I threaten time out if he doesn't pull his pants up. I've had enough. I grab him. I don't know if it was my grip, or him trying to dodge me but he flies back and hits his head quite hard on a corner wall. I feel dreadful. I have assaulted my son and given him brain damage on Mother's Day.
He doesn't want me, he wants Daddy. I watch for signs of concussion. He has at least stopped caring about his jeans.
They drop me off at the Mount for my walk.
On the way up, I pass lots of families with happy, quiet children. I feel a pang of guilt and then remember my kids would be screaming.
You just relax while listening to the sound of tantrums being thrown. Photo / Getty Images
I meet them at the park where our daughter is repeatedly whining that she wants to go home, it's cold, it's cold.
We get home and I make bacon and eggs while I am harassed to continue building a popsicle stick house with a hot glue gun that we started on Friday.
(Disclaimer: I am NOT a Pintrest Mum. Two days earlier, we were on day SEVEN stuck inside with tummy bugs, when my son came in and licked my face because he had seen so much Paw Patrol he thought he was a dog so I was forced to do something that wasn't TV).
I am starving. Our boy is behaving so badly with tiredness but refuses to sleep. I lose it again and tell my husband to take him in the car, I just need him away from me. (Son, not the husband... this time).
I finally sit down to eat when I hear a small voice calling from the bathroom. WHY do they always $#*! when you eat? There is mess over the toilet I cleaned the day before. I just love cleaning up $#*! when I am about to eat, especially when there has been a tummy bug going around.
I sit back down to eat through constant nagging about making her popsicle stick house.
Husband gets back from his drive (with son asleep in car) and asks me if I have hung the washing out yet.
Amazingly, I don't kill him. I finally have a shower. Son wakes up sobbing.
Daughter sits down beside me and has a meltdown because her foot wont cross over the other one. Her legs are already crossed and she is trying to get the top leg to bend around the other again. Confused? Same.
At 2.30pm and I turn the TV on and walk out of the room.
