Tonight was abysmal. (Last night was, too, if you're keeping score at home.)
Despite the fact that Jeff swears Lily misses me all day and asks about me constantly when I'm at work (for increasingly longer and longer hours), we seem completely unable to have any quality time once I'm home in the evenings. Everything is a constant stream of "no!" over which I have zero control.
"No, I won't go potty!"
"No, I don't want any dinner!"
"No, I don't want to read any stories!"
"No, I can't tell you what's wrong!"
Those are actually the good ones, because at least "no" has some kind of explanation. Nights like tonight when it's just a steady fifteen minutes of "No, Mommy! No! I said 'No, Mommy!' No!" tire me out beyond anything I'm capable of describing in words.
I used to try to find out what was wrong, to make suggestions to make it better, to attempt to cuddle and soothe the tears. When that didn't ever seem to work, Jeff began to recommend that I walk away, so I've been trying to do that more often of late. All it seems to result in, though, are pee puddles on the floor and ensuing hysterics when I matter-of-factly tell Lily it's time for bed if she doesn't want to do anything else.
And so we arrive at the inevitable bedtime meltdown: Lily gulping back the kinds of sobs that make it hard to catch her breath, me so angry and frustrated that I am, quite honestly, incapable of offering emotional or physical consolation. (Which is ridiculous, by the way, because she's a toddler and I'm an adult and she needs comfort from her mom and I should be able to give it.)
Did I mention I feel like a failure?
And if--if for just one moment--I think that it's just my perception, just my feelings making me feel this way, it's about to get worse. Because now I'm in tears, too, disappointed in the way I've handled the evening, newly resolved to read a thousand articles tonight and find the answer to make tomorrow better. And as I sit there, voice cracking and tears rolling down my face as I try to eek out the last two pages of Angelina Ballerina, do you know what that hysterical, emotional, frustrated daughter of mine's response is?
She pulls me into her arms, buries her face in my neck, and tells me that she's going to pray for me tonight, because I'm sad.
Tonight feels lonely. It feels almost as isolating as those nights when I used to struggle through a nursing session at 3am or those days when I couldn't handle one more minute of witching hour crying. It feels like I don't know how to be a mom--how to be Lily's mom--in any way that's successful or nurturing or positive for her. It feels like she'll only ever remember her mom crying during storytime and lacking patience and nothing else.
It feels like failure.
