The other day at a ballgame, a stranger offered to fix my 4 year old's hair. At first I thought: “Wow, that was really nice of her.” That thought soon turned into, “That was kind of strange.” Then further into “Oh Crap.”
It is like I was seeing her in focus for the first time ever. She was a wreck.
Her beautiful long hair was half in, half out of a ponytail in a mess of rats and some residue of candy that had matted up the front section into a mini-dread. Her green plaid shorts could not have clashed more with her purple polo covered in pink hearts. Her mis-matched clothes were filthy with both dirt and the appearance that she had rolled around in Cheetos. She was wearing Mary Janes that in a former life had been fancy shoes, but were now being worn without socks and covered in mud. Her fingernails were daggers with a solid dirt line under each one.
What in the hell happened to her? More alarmingly, what in the hell has happened to my ability to maintain a child?
My first child would have never looked like that. She wore the clothes I laid out. Her hair was done and usually had a nice matching accessory in it. I always had a bag prepared with wipes and a change of clothes in case of even the smallest mishap. Her fingernails and toenails were painted. She was pristine. What the fuck happened? How had I gone so far off the rails?
But I knew the answer: exhaustion. I am just so tired-ALL the time and it the worst kind of tired-the mental one. I have taken the advice of “Pick your Battles” to the new extreme of “Do whatever is necessary to avoid any conflict or disagreement with my toddler who will scream and make my insides get all twisted with anxiety” This has led to her picking out her own clothes, doing her hair only once a day in the morning (ponytail is the only option, dictated by her), me not suggesting appropriate footwear and getting her to bed as early as possible at night, which leaves no time to do general up-keep.
Somehow the second child broke me. There are things you do with a second child that you would never do with the first. My first child didn’t taste pop until she was 6 and even then and now the only pop she drinks is Sprite. Parker downed her own bottle of grape pop the other day because I couldn’t listen to “I am thirrrrsty” one more freaking time without losing my shit. She eats candy, rides her bike in flip flops, wears tennis shoes without socks and sandals with, screams constantly, doesn’t finish her vegetables, has no manners, climbs every climbable surface in the house… and I just let her. My former self would have never stood for such absurdity.
I could pretend that it is a matter of time- that I just don’t have any, but we all know that is not true. I know what is going on on both coasts (and in the ATL) on the Real Housewives, so I know I have time. It is the energy level that gets me. I have just enough at the end of the day to make it to the kitchen to drum up a snack and that is with picking no fights with my toddler. On days with fights, I have to have my older daughter bring me the snacks.
Somewhere along the way, I just got tired. The kind of tired no amount of sleep can fix. I make decisions based strictly on the path of least resistance. I can’t even imagine what would happen if I had another child. You would most likely see the third one driving my car around town in just his/her diaper.
I guess you just get used to a certain amount of crazy and build up an immunity, until pretty soon you don’t even realize that your daughter looks like she is feral, which in some ways, is probably an accurate portrayal of my life now. All I can hope is that I haven’t done any long term damage to either of my daughters: one of them kept completely in line and the other not knowing what the hell a line is. Until then, there is always tomorrow for clipping fingernails and painting toenails, let’s just make it through today.
No comments:
Post a Comment