Mom to Mom - A Lesson Learned

Mom to mom I’d like to share with you a great lesson in parenting that I learned yesterday…

It was a smidge irrational to believe that my sweet baby was going to stay a sweet baby forever. She was bound to disobey, test my patience, lie, scream at the top of her lungs in an attempt to get her way, and say or do things that would hurt my feelings.  These are all things I pretended to “know”, but I hadn’t quite understood because my sweet baby Addisyn could do no wrong…that is until yesterday. Yesterday was the day when my happy-go-lucky-parenting bubble burst and washed away all hope that my precious Addy was going to be the one and only child on this earth who didn’t have any disciplinary issues.  Disobedience was at an all-time high as she voiced her three favorite phrases (“Stop It!”, “No, No, No!”, and “Mine!”) with no regard for mommy sanity.  Patience and logic were exhaustively tested as I still can’t figure out how my daughter can’t count, but never comes to me when I ask her to until I get to “three”.  And, I know she wasn’t trying to hurt my feelings, but it breaks my heart when she will hug and kiss the dog who has been plopped on the couch all day and won’t even give me a little squeeze when I have a day of cooking, cleaning, running errands and changing diapers ahead of me.

Okay, I’m no idiot. I mean, I knew at some point I would have to rummage through my closest to find my discipline big girl pants, but I wasn’t prepared to dig up that outfit just yet. I was still riding on the fact that I have always had awesome communication with her and thought I could reason with my two year old if I ever needed to.  Usually just one timeout will do the trick, but it has never been like it was yesterday. Nope, yesterday I spent the whole day in a battle of wits and perseverance against a two year old girl with the super powers of heart melting smiles, irresistibly infectious laughter, the scream of a banshee, and the resilience of Rocky Balboa (queue Eye of the Tiger and visual of Addisyn shadow boxing in front of me).  

So here I am, finally writing this post one day late, three gray hairs (no lie), and two mini meltdowns later arriving at this one point (thanks to some awesome friends): I had a successful day yesterday. Parenting isn’t all about crossing things off my list, being the mom-of-the-year, or having the perfect day. Sometimes things are going to get chaotic and, no matter what I am up against, parenting is about doing whatever it takes to raise my child to be a good and loving person.  It’s true that with all the love I get to experience with the gift of Addisyn, I also have the great role of teaching and molding her to know right from wrong, truth from lies, and love from pain. It will be exhausting and discouraging at times, but isn’t that why being a mom is so special? I have been given a job to do. And like any other occupation, there will be days in the office that I will want to quit or scream or go “Office Space” on the nearest inanimate object, but at the end of the day as long as my daughter was shown what is right, remains safe in my arms, and is unconditionally loved; I’ve done my job.

This post is for the mommas J

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Addisyn had a “Winter Wonderland” birthday party this past weekend that was so amazing! I am saving it for another post because we have two year pics coming up this weekend and a love letter to give to her. I can’t wait to show you!

"Life is like photography - Just use the negatives to develop positives." - Unknown

Addisyn at school...