Speaking of a Perfect Storm

Brutal day of mothering so far and it's only 2pm so there's still plenty of more time for fun. The perfect storm began this morning gathering up churning waves, dark clouds, and high winds in our house today and officially hit land at 1:30 this afternoon.

I think I. has been again fighting off a virus for a few days now which does not help improve attitude and really, I have been trying to take that into account. Here's how the perfect storm grew and grew:

1. When I went to pick her up at the gym, she ignored me and then refused to stand up to walk to the kids' club bathroom (she said she had to go). This is the third day in a row of this crap.
2. My shoulder is absolutely killing me even when I'm not moving; a direct result of the last 3 days of I. refusing to stand up to do something and just throwing herself down like deadweight. 24/7 acute pain due to one certain person is a hard thing to keep moving on from.
3. When I had a salesperson over here for 20 minutes after lunch, she kept interrupting and whining like a brat.
4. She proudly wet her underwear not once but twice already today. Obviously losing television time is not enough consequence for her to stop doing it. Just another area of discipline I feel I'm failing in.
5. The straw was when it was time for resttime and she talked back to me in the most snotty fashion and that was it. The straw - the big fat proverbial straw.

And I lost it. Not my finest moment but I grabbed her and yelled that she had to stop talking back to me, that I was sick of it, and I wasn't putting up with it anymore. Like any of that matters to her, I know but after literally 3 weeks of this shit, day in and day out, without a break, you know I'm human. I picked her up, put her in the crib (thank God she's still in that), put her sippy cup of milk and some books in there and told her if she talked to me like that, I wasn't going to give her the milk or read books to her, I didn't want to be around someone who talked like that to me and then I walked out.

To say that she got upset is an understatement. Things were launched out of the crib like it was a foxhole, screaming and much crying ensued but after 5-10 minutes, things quieted down and I hear her turning the pages as she looks through books. Meanwhile, I've taken a shower, made myself an iced coffee, iced my shoulder for a few minutes of pain relief, read a bit in a magazine, and got out a parenting book to find a better tactic for next time when she talks back to me. Which will probably be as soon as I walk into her room...grrrr. The basis of the plan is no emotion and she's going to spend time apart from me in her room. If she is disrespectful towards me, she doesn't get to be around me - bottom line.

The bad part of that plan is that I'm going to have to lug her up 2 flights of stairs because she's not going up there by herself, I know that for a fact. This is not going to be conducive for my shoulder getting better but I'm out of choices being the only one here. I'd willingly sacrifice my shoulder for nipping this disrespect and brattiness in the bud.

I asked my mother if I had a problem with talking back at this age or ever for that matter because I never remember doing it but you know, I had a different perspective. My mother seemed shocked and said that I didn't. That doesn't make me feel better.