Tough Mothering Day

Today I didn't feel the perspective of my last post.  We're in day two of summer vacation.  Don't mistake me, I was really looking forward to having I. home for summer vacation.  And I still have hope but slogging through these early days has been difficult for a few reasons.

First, I. thinks that all my time should be spent playing with her.  I try explaining to her that Mommy still has to get everything done that she normally gets done while I. is at school.  Mommy doesn't get summer vacation .  That being said, I am having her help in the morning getting stuff done so that we do have time before D. gets up from morning nap to do something together.  In the afternoon after "rest time" which consists of about 45 minutes, I make a point of playing some sort of game with her.  However, it seems to be a case of "what have you done for me this past minute (not even lately)" and honestly, it kind of pisses me off.  

Secondly, I. is complaining a whole lot.  About everything and anything.  And it's driving me up the wall.  Seriously.  When I'm in hour 7 of her complaints, and granted it is interspersed with good moments when I'm playing with her (see above), I start seeing red.  Take for instance today.  Came down in the morning, I. says she's not hungry.  Well D. definitely is so I make him his breakfast.  Five minutes later as I'm sitting down to feed him, I. says she's hungry and proceeds to complain that I'm feeding him first.  Lunchtime it's the same complaint.  We play a fun game in the afternoon while D. is napping and then head out for the chiropractor.  They have now moved just down the street and we've been talking about walking/I. biking down to our appointments.  Everything is great on the way there but on the way home, all I hear is complaining and grumbling.  By the time we reach our complex she's in full tilt mode and as much as I have been ignoring her verbal negativity, I'm not able to ignore it any longer because it's in full tilt.  She refuses to go up the hill so I tell her to get off the bike and walk it up then which leads to more bad attitude and her hitting her leg into the pedal.  I know that hurts and maybe I should have hugged and consoled.  However, if she hadn't been throwing her little fit, it probably wouldn't have happened in the first place.  I shut my mouth since we're literally steps from our street and we cross over to our street.  Then she proceeds to throw a fit because she's going to have to go up an incline towards the garages.  As she reaches a loud, whining pitch, I pull her off the bike and order her up to the garage.  Was it my finest hour?  No, it wasn't and as I pushed D. in the stroller and I.'s bike up the incline and down the alley, I. started shrieking at the top of her lungs.  Maybe I should have been that ideal mom to lower my voice and bend down to her level and attempted to talk to her.  Get to the root of her feelings and frustration.  But my experience with that has been that she won't talk when she's at that point anyway.

To add to all this, V. has been gone so we're discussing this over the phone.  He said that the girls went through this complaining phase but it was always worse with their mother.  Since I've been around he's talked about how the girls argue and act up with their mother but not with him and I saw that too.  However, he would attribute that to how the mother would interact with the girls and while that may be true, some of the compliance with him was because he wasn't the primary parent.  I see that now.  I am careful to not be I.'s friend and be on her level, which was a problem with the older girls and their mother.  That being said, there is definitely something to be said about only being around less than 25 hours a week like V. is.  And that's on a good week.  Of course, I. is not going to argue and act out against the parent who is only there a little while each week.  This is the parent who she is craving and missing so she's not going to act up.  My annoyance with V. which I plan on telling him is that I think he's naive in thinking that his kids mind him better and don't act up with him because of how he parents.  It's not that.  It's that he's the one leaving all the time, the one whose presence they can't necessarily depend upon and they don't want to do anything to further limit that or jeopardize that.

I have to be honest, it makes me sad to acknowledge that.  I have to hope that even though V. works so much that having an intact marriage will help our children despite his absence.