The witching hour

Snowy Monday morning was super-fun. Monday night was NOT. The contrast between Monday morning and Monday night gave me emotional whiplash. I’ll just paste two journal entries here to illustrate:

Monday, December 10, 2018. I’m feeling all over the place emotionally right now. I cooked for two solid hours (blah) this evening after 3 hours of playing and then running (with the stroller) in the snow this morning. I’m all tuckered out! I had meat that was labeled “use by” today, and it turned out to be twice as much as I needed for the recipe I bought it for (even when I doubled the recipe), so I made another recipe with the rest of it. A few days ago I had thawed some frozen enchilada filling and didn’t end up using it so I had to make those pronto too, to avoid spoiling that meat. Meat is a big responsibility! At least I won’t have to cook for the rest of the week. I also just watched a sweet predictable sappy Christmas chick flick and it also seems to have added to my emotional state. Not to mention…

This evening Rose was in one of her worst moods yet: stubborn, ignoring me, lashing out at everyone (with an emphasis on her mother), refusing to practice piano, griping, complaining, throwing her fork across the dinner table with a shriek of rage when we wouldn’t let her eat messy enchiladas with her hands. It was hard. Everything I tried failed to reach Rose in her Mood, from gentle sympathy all the way to callous firmness. I could go into more details, but it belongs in the past and I am too drained from it to relive the details.

After dinner we tried to have FHE. Hah. Yeah right. We asked Jay and Rose to tell Amber the nativity story. Jay told it, using the nativity set as a visual aid, but Amber was so mad at not being able to play with the nativity set herself at that moment (even though she has full access to it all day while everyone is at school) that she thrashed and screamed for Jay’s entire five minute story, drowning out his words. Jeff and I both had to bodily restrain all four of her jabbing kicking limbs while Jay talked. Nobody heard what he said over Amber’s bellowing.

The instant Jay finished, I picked up a still flailing Amber, carried her to the bathroom, brushed her clenched teeth, and sat her on the toilet. I read one verse from the Book of Mormon aloud and we had family prayer. I put/unceremoniously deposited Amber in bed and asked if she would say her prayers. She said a pouty NO, so I said a short prayer for her. I don’t know if Rose said her prayers tonight. Sigh. The girls were in bed by 6:45pm. (they did have their reading lamps on for a little while).

I should add that the easygoing big brother Jay did everything he was supposed to this afternoon and more, no big deal. He’s not always perfect, but tonight was an excellent night for him to be awesome, when his sisters were busy fritzing out. Thank you, Jay. There is hope.

There are all kinds of challenges with raising kids, more than I will ever know or experience firsthand. Some barriers are diagnosed and documented, others are just inexplicable stubborn difficulties. The fact that my kid legitimately doesn’t even “have” anything (like a diagnosis explaining her behavior) but she is still behaving so atrociously makes it feel like my fault when she acts like a raging tornado. There are all too many less-visible non-diagnose-able challenges. Ours is a brilliant perfectionist superhumanly strong-willed daughter who blows a fuse whenever she feels that she’s not in control of the situation or when she’s overtired or at the end of the day or when she isn’t perfect on her first try or 100,000 other reasons. It is exhausting and I hope we (I) can get better at handling it. It’s hard to learn coping strategies when the same strategy rarely works more than once! I am plumbing the depths every time and more often than not, nothing works and I just have to be there, failing repeatedly, while she wears me down to a dull twitchy shell of a human. If Rose isn’t happy, she doesn’t think anyone else deserves to be happy either, and she’s extremely talented and persistent at making sure of it. Waaaah, but then she can flip a switch and be our sweet clever vivacious Rosie again. I can’t keep up!!!!

It snowed almost half an inch last night, and the kids still had school like normal today. Boring. We managed to squeeze in half an hour of snow playing before the school bus came. Once Jay and Rose were gone, Amber and I stayed outside together for another two hours. We built another snowman (Snow Vader), went sledding, and explored the icy canal. After that, I put Amber into the stroller and went on a laborious 4 mile run in the snow. I listened to an audiobook on low volume while I ran to take my mind off of the difficulties of pushing the stroller in the snow. It helped, but sledding was still my favorite exercise of the day!

So the DAY was good, but boy did that witching hour WITCH tonight.

Tuesday, December 11, 2018. Today was SO MUCH BETTER than yesterday, all the way through to the end (aka the kids’ bedtime). I was feeling kind of emotionally raw after last night’s jagged set of difficulties, and I dreaded the witching hour off and on all day. Blessedly, Rose didn’t have to practice piano this afternoon, (one of yesterday’s major issues), and she did her homework with very minimal balking. Jay had a bit of trouble in the bathroom, but I got him to clean up the mess once I noticed it a few hours later, hah. Amber wasn’t quite as violent and everyone liked at least part of our dinner.

This morning it was 33 degrees and raining when we arrived at piano lessons (at 7:35am). The rain stopped ten minutes after we arrived, so I gave Amber the iPad, put in my earbuds, turned on my current audiobook (The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde), and ran back and forth in front of our piano teacher’s house while Amber sat in the car iPadding it up. One length was .12 of a mile–apparently that’s the max distance from an unattended Amber that I’m comfortable with, because it’s the same distance as my driveway loops at home. I ran 5 miles back and forth, back and forth.

Back at home, (post shower), Amber and I made a double batch of bread and a double batch of peanut butter blossom cookies. Double yum! It was a lot of scooping (88 cookies) and a lot of unwrapping candies to put on top of the cookies, but Amber was a great helper and enjoyed opening dozens of foil wrappers. Right after lunch, a friend came over to watch a movie together–not just any movie, a Christmas chick flick! We watched Borrowed Hearts and it was sweet and excellent as always. Chick flicks are always better with like-minded friends.

We talked for a little while after the movie ended, and it was so pleasant to have a friend over during the day! It has been a long time since I had a friend over at my house. Too often I feel like I can’t do anything social or frivolous until after my entire day is over and Jeff is home. Most days by then I don’t feel social and I don’t want to go anywhere or talk to anyone; I just want to be alone in a soundproofed room to reclaim my equilibrium. Discovery: I can do something fun during the day, in between the work and chaos! The question is, will I have the courage to do it again?

Tonight I found out that only one of my two brand-new wolf scouts will be coming on Wednesdays this next year. Surely we will combine with the Bears? My hopes are soaring. Cub scouts has been my hardest church calling ever, including the memorable time back in 2010 when I was nearly 8 months pregnant and called as primary president. Anyways, I was so excited about these cub scout possibilities that I called Mom at 5pm to tell her.

I love my mom and how she always listens to me, whether I’m whining about cub scouts or lamenting the witching hour or extolling my latest library selection. I confessed to her how sad I felt about not being able to do anything right during last night’s drama, and also how I have felt too overwhelmed to do anything specific or extra for the church’s light the world service calendar this year. (I haven’t followed it at all.) Mom is so wise, I just drank in her reply like a dehydrated desert dweller. I can’t remember her exact words, but she said that caring and trying matter, and a mother’s life is all service, so it’s ok not to feel like doing extra this month because I’m already doing what matters most by being/doing my best for my family. Thank you, mom. Those words were balm to my sore soul. This wasn’t the first time I’ve heard those things, but I find I need to hear them regularly. My wise mother also said that our short, botched, screaming-flailing FHE last night was a triumph because we tried to do what’s right, not because it turned out well. Sigh. I got all teary when she told me this and I’m getting even more teary as I write it down.

Is there anything better than a wise, loving mother? Maybe I can be that to my kids. Time to keep on trying. Courage!

Yes I can.

If not now, then when?

I am strong.

I can and I will.

(Over the weekend, I followed the guided steps to creating my own mantra in Kara Goucher’s new book Strong, and those are the four mantras I came up with. They are rather empowering, aren’t they? I love how seamlessly sports psychology applies to regular life. I’m not big on self-help books, and I was initially interested in the book Strong because it’s also full of interesting stories of the failures and triumphs of an Olympian, but it is turning out to be quite the empowering read.)

{end journal entries}

So there it is. My most current SOUL in all of its ups, downs, vulnerabilities, concerns, uncertainties, struggles, and challenges.

For the record, Wednesday and Thursday this week have also been much smoother than Monday’s witching hour. Looking back, the girls were probably still over tired from staying up almost 2 hours later than usual at the ward Christmas party on Saturday. I will never apologize for our early bedtime again! We stick to it for a reason. It’s called sanity and peace.

One last vignette: in between songs during my piano practice this morning, Amber looked up from her toys and said quietly “I like that ‘usic.” Then she came over, opened the miniature version of the song book I was playing from and sang along for the next ten minutes. She doesn’t know many of the words, but that didn’t stop her from singing something sweetly. These moments seem few and far between, but when they happen LIFE IS GOOD and I can do this.