the weekends

Hi. My name is Erika, and I am a great big giant baby. I'm spoiled rotten to the core, and have no business feeling unhappy or overwhelmed at all.

I wrote that as my starter to this post just so you all kow that I am 100% aware of how ridiculous I am being. But, since I can't really control my feelings I guess I just have to deal with them. So here I am, getting it all out. You can stop reading now if you are not interested in attending my pity party. I'll understand.

The weekends here are hard. My husband now works, which is a total godsend, something we've been needing him to do for quite some time. So, see? How can I complain about him working when he only started working again because of all my complaining? See the first paragraph of this entry for the answer.

You all know by now that I work nights, Sunday-Thursday 3:30 p - 12:00 a. Well, now my husband works nights (mostly), too. He works Wed, Thurs, Fri nights, Sat either day or night (sometimes both!) and Sun days. This is hard. It's hard because now I have no help at bedtime, because even when he works days he's not home for bed. I have no help for dinner time. I have less help during the days because on the nights that he works, he takes a nap in the afternoon so he won't sleep through his shift. It's hard in the mornings because I used to be able to sleep in, but now that my husband is home late, I'm the one who gets up in the mornings with The Kiddos.

All of this is very logical and makes sense. I can't and I don't fault my husband for his work hours, or the fact that he needs a nap in the afternoon to make it through. It's just hard. It's hard because he has to leave for work right at the time of day when The Kiddos become most difficult. It's hard because I have to deal with their end of day meltdowns with no backup, plus I'm supposed to be on the clock working myself. It's hard because usually he leaves for work either late Sat morning or early Sat afternoon and he's not home until Sunday night after bedtime. Every week. It's like he travels for business and is away every weekend.

The Kiddos know my buttons and they aren't afraid to push them. I lose my patience. I don't like the bickering and the fighting. I can't stand the way they expect me to resolve every dispute between them, and I have stopped doing that; telling them they need to sort it out. And then it's hard to listen to all the bickering that follows as they try to do just that. It's exhausting, and I feel overwhelmed by it at times..... all the while feeling stupid and guilty because so many people out there have it so much worse than I do, and how dare I let myself feel this way when it's nothing compared to what other families deal with.

I cried today. It's stupid. I cried because The Babe told me she wanted to go out to lunch, so I thought "OK great! We'll go out to lunch, get a few errands done, be out of the house for the day, and it will go fast, and it won't be so overwhelming just watching the time tick slowly by". So then it was time to go, and she's changed her mind. She doesn't want to go out, she just wants to drive through somewhere and eat the food at home. Well, no. I'm not loading both kids into the car just to drive thru McDonald's and come right back. We have food here. So, we had a standoff of sorts. I had gotten myself all psyched up to get out of the house, it had made all the difference to my outlook on the day, and now I knew that even if I won the battle and we got to leave, The Babe would be in such a mood about it that it wouldn't be a good outing anyways. She won, no matter how you look at it. Meanwhile, The Boy wanted to go out just as much as I did, so he's crying "go now, Mommy, go now!", while The Babe is pouting and shouting that she doesn't want to go, and has collapsed into a puddle on the floor, refusing to move. I cried. I left the room before I burst into tears... but it's so overwhelming.... I have no help, they always disagree, whatever my idea for the day was never works out.... and I have 2 whole days of this before my husband is home.

My name is Erika, and I am a great big giant baby. I'm spoiled rotten to the core, and I have no business feeling unhappy and overwhelmed at all. I know this... and yet, there it is.