I don’t usually post on Saturdays. Heck, lately I’ve even dropped Fridays. It has something to do with spending some more time doing other things I love, trapeze class (with Andrew!) among them. The evenings, time I usually dedicate to blogging, have been filled with some good down time with less computer and more lying around talking and listening to Andrew play guitar. It’s been really good. But that’s another story.

Yesterday.

Oh, what a crappy day! I have to share the hilarious disaster that was Friday. It’s never anything big, but all the small mishaps that seem to add up over the day and eventually leave me in a stupid heap of sobbing mess on the floor while Milo pats my back and assures me, “I know how you feel, Mama.”

It’s things like Emil not napping for the 4th day in a row. I gird myself and tell myself, You are the parent and you are responsible for making rules and sticking with them. And ha, that is the first mistake. Not the making rules part, but the assuming that I can control others’ behavior. Others being Emil. He is in that sticky spot where he still needs a nap but fiercely resists them until we have been battling for two hours straight, me with my ass completely asleep as I strain against his door to keep him in. I try to read and breathe and stay centered, but the older two are wrestling in the next room and knocking over a glass of water right next to the fan and I’m picturing two electrocuted boys and running to the spilled water and yanking the plug out and Emil has sensed my weakness and is out of his room again.

The gentle parenting approach has gone out the window as I enter his room for the umpteenth time to place him back into his bed without a word, without an expression on my face, all robot resignation and zero patient hero. It is all in vain, really. He wins, as two hours of screaming and fighting and flailing and spilled water and near-broken lamp are when I call it quits. I think he knows. That he waits me out, a little clock in his brain counting down the minutes until he is free again. I would give in, stop trying, but every day without a nap brings unprecedented naughtiness. He is so exhausted that he stops caring about consequences or the people he loves or rules or making any sort of sense at all.

And so, after two hours of fighting, I let him out. I let him out so he could immediately slap me in the stomach and run into the room where I had folded all the laundry. So he could throw what took me an hour to fold, in-between rounds of holding his door closed and tearing his brothers off each other, across the room and into a different puddle of water I hadn’t noticed before. And yes, now the dog is barking outside like a maniac because I forgot to let her back in and it’s raining. So she’s muddy.

Cue tears.

It was just one of those days. Today, we’re skipping the nap.

Have a good weekend.