My life running across the see-saw

I spend my life running from one end of a see-saw to the other, trying to balance feeling guilty as hell for how I react to my children being children and feeling completely entitled to feel and act however I may feel and act because sometimes my children treat me like shit.

One the one hand this blog has been an arena for me to vent all the miserable things about mothering children.  On the other, it has been my pathetic attempt to beg forgiveness of my children, to explain how challenging a role this "mother" gig is and how I adore them even when I'm at my wit's end and would lambast an adult who did the things to me that they do.  

The hardest part of this see-sawing is when 2 of the kids or, HELL'S BELLS, all of my kids blast me full force with their negative emotions, their tantrums, attitudes, head-banging, throwing toys within a short period of time, like an afternoon.  Like in the window between picking up at car pool line and D coming home at 6:00 when I am also attempting to make a barely edible dinner.  

For the last month or so, I have noticed some big changes in G.  Far fewer tantrums.  Better able to be patient and not lose his marbles over disappointment.  Being around him is pleasurable a lot of the time now, and that has not been a statement I've made about him in a LONG time.  It is so nice to enjoy his company.

Of course, M, who turns 2 on Friday, is a full-blown toddler---banging his head on the floor or wall when he doesn't get exactly what he wants, screaming and crying if things don't go his way.  I REALLY would have preferred a little down time before ramping up to insane little person behavior again.  (Another reason why having children two years apart is perhaps not a good idea.)

And now N seems to be going through her own little emotional upheaval, which really stinks because she has been the normal one for a long time, the one I could count on as being not crazy.  She has been apt to burst into tears without much provocation, and I've heard more attitude than I'd like coming from her lips.  

I am not a sports fan, by any stretch of the imagination, but I often think of this mothering as a soccer game.  Since I can't get out of the game, I have no choice but to continue lunging for the kids' bad moods, smacking them away from the goal, and trying to keep my injuries to a minimum.