Perfect Mother, Bad Mother

Sorry for the long silence, didn't get the computer back until Thursday evening. Luckily they saved all of our data and backed it up externally too. Let this be a lesson to you boys & girls: back up your data, especially if you take a buttload of pictures! Not sure if I have mentioned this, but we took photos of Miles every day in 2010. Once you start snapping, you can never take just one shot. So we have a looooot of jpegs.

Anyway that's all straightened out.

Thanks again to everyone who emailed or commented and took a look at my new business - your support is so encouraging.

Back to the topic at hand: Miles is 13 months old today. Woo!

I'm feeling better about my ability to handle a toddler. But it certainly is a work in progress. See, my mom was a yeller. And I, sadly, am a yeller. In many ways I'm a fairly laid back person and not quick to anger. But in other ways, I'm easily irritated and short-tempered. I'm not sure how to explain why that is (maybe I need therapy? I'm sure I do). But everyone who's had one knows that small children are good at pushing your buttons, and the trick is to remember that they push buttons simply because the buttons are there, not because they are trying to be "bad."

I can give you a concrete example from something that happened yesterday. First, know that both diapers (disposables) and wipes are like catnip to a curious kitty where Miles is concerned. We use sposies at night, for daycare, and when I'm really behind on laundry and all the cloth is dirty (oops). We use wipes, obviously, every day. But if either of those items are anywhere in reach of the boy he will take them, empty the wipes container, and carry the diaper around like a favorite babydoll, refusing to give it back.

For some time I have been placing the wipes at the back center of the changing table shelf, the only place convenient for me that he couldn't reach. That's also where I would keep a diaper or two when I'll need one shortly (say, after a bath in prep for bed). Yesterday, after a minor skirmish over the wipes case, I placed it back in the "safe" spot and left the room to putter about. When I came back in a moment later he had pushed the entire changing table away from the wall to get the wipes!

My instant reaction: I raised my voice and angrily said, "NO! That is not okay!" It's not like I flipped my lid and screamed or raged, but as quickly as I got annoyed, I got annoyed at myself for hollering about something so stupid. I could have just calmly said, "No Miles, don't touch," and moved the wipes and redirected him. That's what the Mother I Would Like To Be would have done. After all, from his point of view he was not being naughty, he was simply solving a problem: how to get to the wipes. He doesn't even have the capacity to see it the way I was seeing it: every day I have to remember to hide the wipes and diapers or else we'll have to tussle over them, which is annoying, and I just took the wipes away again after changing him, and I thought I had solved this issue, by hiding them, and here he goes ruining my little plan! ARGH!

That's just an example. I know that I am holding myself to an impossible standard, but the standard is always there in the back of my mind, and I know for a fact that other mothers feel this way too. I remember a time when my stepmom, who is close in age to me, was feeling overwhelmed during my sister's babyhood - this was my stepmother's first bio child and certainly first baby. I remember her saying dismally that she felt she was a bad mother because she was so short-tempered and impatient. And at the time I was baffled by this because I was amazed and impressed by her patience and gentleness every day - from my point of view she handled the challenges of a spirited toddler with grace, but it didn't look that way to her.

Mr. Ibis tells me that I am incredibly patient and a wonderful mother, and I have to believe him, especially when I deeply doubt that it is so. Always on one shoulder there is the Perfect Mother, frowning disapprovingly when I snap or grouch or grumble, and on the other shoulder is the Bad Mother, a specter, really, of myself as a screaming meanie and everything that I dread turning out to be. I do wish I could throw them both off a bridge, but probably I will be stuck with them for years to come.