Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Beer and Ice Cream

What they don't tell you before you actually give birth to your children is that, oftentimes, your diet shifts from pickles and ice cream to beer and ice cream.  Of course, if money is tight then a diet of beer alone might sustain you if you can make yourself eat the half-eaten food the children decided was not good enough for them to eat (this coming from children who are often caked in snot and telling you how good boogers taste.)  Today, was not a horrible day but it was certainly not great.  At the end of it, I just decided to quit caring for a few minutes. 

Of course, we bathed the boys, brushed their teeth and all the parenting things that we can't rightfully neglect but, when the kids asked for ice cream for dinner, my husband and I looked at each other and thought, "Why the heck not?"  Considering how insane it had been prior to dinner, why pretend that feeding our children ice cream could possibly be worse?

Between boys fighting (since we do have 3 of them), grown boys soiling themselves and REFUSING to admit it, to clean themselves or to cooperate then cleaning said soiled clothes, comforting a child bitten by the one who "should" know better but doesn't because he's autistic, and all the normal, crazy stuff that would go on in a house containing 3 boys who are 5 and under.  There are simply times I just give up.  I know it's an error of my perception and I know that these feelings are temporary but there are times when there is only so much I can do to try and steer my family in a healthy direction.  I can only handle so many regressions, so many set backs, so many literal hits to my face (today, by a precisely thrown toy). 

I almost took my frustrations out on my husband but, thankfully, caught myself and immediately apologized.  At one point, I was acting like a toddler myself by exploding with frustration.  Unwittingly, my husband made a harmless comment after I had just summed up the latest ridiculous ISSUE that my boys were having.  All he did was say, "Uh-huh," in a manner that my psychotic self interpreted as "he thinks he understands as much as me about how nuts it gets after having them for two hours and I have rarely NOT had them" provoked an unfair response from me which was quickly followed by an apology.  The fact is it's tough no matter what.  I should be glad that he understands at all because he is involved.

So, when my children asked for ice cream at dinner I simply didn't have anything left in me to steer these little monsters any further toward the correct direction.  I know that goes against all parenting books.  I know it goes against what a nutritionist, pediatrician, therapist, teacher, so on and so forth, would suggest but I have reached a point now that I have to let up a little and care a little less about some things.  If I don't, the beer might turn into tequila, the tequila into whiskey, the whiskey into . . . you get the point.  This is a tough row to hoe and there are times I need a break.  With my belly full of cookies and cream ice cream, I will polish off this beer (don't worry, there has been a break in between), and will let go until the morning when I'll start all over again.  Perhaps tomorrow, we'll all eat broccoli.

1 comment:

  1. Heather,

    We all scream for ice cream sometimes. I think it is perfectly fine to feed your boys ice cream...that's what makes them kids, right? As for your beer, that sounds good too.

    ReplyDelete

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