I’ve been struggling with this thing today. A case of the “should’s”. You know what I mean. That icky mommy place where you beat yourself up over all the things your kiddos should be doing?
For me, its potty training and pancakes. Random, right? I know. But right now, we are stuck in this weird place with our boys. One is two, so he is one-part toddler, one tiny part kid. The other is four, so he is one-part kid, one tiny part toddler. Those toddler parts may be the end of me.
Take kid #1 for example. He’s four and a half and really should be totally potty trained, no?He is amazing. Smart. So smart. Which is why I know that he knows exactly how to pee on the potty. But yet he is struggling to do it ALL the time. When we’re home it’s always a little bit of a battle, but we’ve mostly got it down. At school, all bets are off. We start kindergarten in the fall which is leading me to have an ohmygoodnessthiskidneedstopee freakout.
Then we have kid #2 aka if he was kid #1 there would be no kid #1. I barely mean that, but on rare occasion he does cause me to curl up in my bed and hide, playing his brother’s favorite game “Tell everyone I ran away!” He is so stubborn and can outlast any 40-year old mom (aka me). Right now, his stubbornness carries over to food, namely pancakes or in Ben-speak, pan-pan. The kid is eating pan-pan three meals a day with no sign of stopping. Yes, he should be eating more green things.
So, these two child-sized “crises” coupled with the fact that it’s a Monday led me to a mommy meltdown. What kind of mom am I, letting one kid dictate the laws of potty and the other nosh nonstop on pancakes?
The surviving kind. The at least they’re eating and someday they’ll pee kind. The I’m going to meet you where you’re at and love you through it kind. And the I’m not going to fight it because some hills aren’t worth dying on kind.
Because you know what, friends? This too shall pass. We will prevail over the potty and I’m pretty darn sure no one ever lived on pancakes alone for too long.
This post originally appeared on i dream of naptime. It has been reprinted with permission.
