A really bad mommy momment.

Well I'm going to steal CK's blog title for this post today.  (Sorry CK but when you read what I have to say you will understand). 

I went to a mother's day tea party with J (3) and had to take O with me as well.  It went wonderfully well.  We ate strawberries, cake and whipped cream and drank iced tea in tea cups.  My little J was adorable and O decided he really liked this tea party stuff.  I think he just about drank the whole pot of iced tea. 

We went to pick of E.  I didn't have the stroller so I had to drag/pull O all around the school building to the new pick up spot.   The new pick up spot has a playground.   Yeah.  So O's entertaining himself pretty well on the slide etc.  I have to hover because he's still little and this equipment is meant for school kids.  So E arrives and we head home.  Or at least try to.  O's having fun.  He doesn't want to go.  So I end up carrying a wriggling 36 pound 2 year old all the way around the other side of the building back to the parking lot.  Lots of fun. 

We get home, carefully carry in the mother's day present that J had made at school.  It was a flowerpot full of dirt and just starting to sprout seedlings and a card.  J keeps going on how it's her present not E's or O's, rubbing quite frankly in their faces.  I keep telling her that no, it's mommy's mother's day present, so it's my present. J keeps trying to open it, it was wrapped in cellophane.  I finally get so annoyed with the carping that I said fine, you can have it and helped her open up the cellophane.  But that's not all.. they continue to fight and argue and tell each other to stay away from the plant so much so that I finally lose it.  I pick up the flower pot and proceed to huck it, yes I hucked it, out the open door.  Not, shall we say, my finest moment. 

So what should happen?  Well, I guess my throwing arm is out of practice from those days of ball playing, cause it didn't make it out the door.  The pot did.  It made it all the way to the back fence.  The dirt... well it hit the window, the blinds, my alarm system panel, my bench, the baseboard heater, the floor, my shoes, my coats, my bags... the floor, the carpet.  In other words, it went everywhere.  

Of course the kids are losing it.  Banded together suddenly by grumpy mommy's outburst they are hugging and consoling one another.  Which makes me even more annoyed cause one minute ago you couldn't get them to speak nicely to each other. 

So I drag out the vacuum and proceed to vacuum it all up.  My 5 year old decides to lecture me on how I did not do a nice thing and how I hurt J's feelings etc.  Fortunately, I couldn't hear most of it over the noise of the vacuum.  When I am in the "high" of frustration/anger, I am not ready to be patronized or rationalized with.  I have to come down off the anger first.  So vacuuming was a good thing to be engaged with at the moment. 

But it doesn't really get better. O decides to have an all out tantrum.  We'd all been up early that morning and he was tired and wanted something he couldn't have.  I'm trying to make lunch while I have this whiny, crying 2 year old standing there pushing me to get my attention etc.  I get him calmed down only to find out he wants me to carry him.  Uh uh. No way.  I'd had enough of carrying kids on my hip while I tried to get supper made.  Besides he's heavy.  Put him down, sob city once more.  By this point, I am in tears.  Both at how awful I was being and by all the crying/whining.  Nothing gets me more frazzled than an overabundance of tears that are out of my power to console.  

We finally eat lunch, all the while E is praising me to the sky.  She wants me to know how much she loves me.  She's thanking me for lunch, she's thanking me for being a good mommy, how pretty I am, you name it, over and over again.  She wants me to feel better she said.  How could she know that every sentence out of her mouth was like loading up the guilt for my earlier outburst.  A twist of the knife if you will.  

So I'm feeling pretty bad by now.  (I'm not completely irredeemable you know)  I get O down for his nap and the girls set up with colouring and I sneak out the back yard to grab the flower pot,  which thankfully was still intact.   I was thinking I could still rescue her plant.  But no, this is when I find out that the entire pot had gotten dumped in my house and I must have vacuumed up all the little seedlings.  Undaunted, I shovel some dirt from the garden into the pot.  I look up there's E.  I tell her to be quiet that I want to fix J's plant but I don't want J to know.  E looks at me says okay and "you're doing a good thing mom".   Ouch. 

So I find a small plant, stick it in the pot and bring it in and show J and tell her that her plant is alright. She looks at it and says .."Did you get dirt from Papa's garden?"   BUSTED.  She can't see the garden from where she's sitting but she's a smart cookie.  She knew that there was a lot of dirt on the floor that I had vacuumed up.  But I  think I did manage to fool her about the plant because her face was wreathed in smiles.  I know it's a lie but if I can make her feel better it's worth it.  I did say I was sorry and gave her a big hug too. 

So when hubby comes home that night, he knew something was up cause I had said something to him via email earlier but he didn't know what.  I had to work so I didn't really want to talk about it before hand because I knew it would get me crying again.   But when I went to go to work he noticed dirt on top of the alarm unit.  I hadn't noticed it.  So I tell him the story thinking he's going to be horrified with me.  Well he starts laughing and laughing and laughing.  It made me feel a little better. 

Still.  I don't know what's wrong with me.  I should say this isn't like me.  I'm not normally this irrational.  Emotional maybe, crazy irrational.. no.  The only thing I can say is that my PMS has been getting out of hand lately.  I never used to get many symptoms but I'm finding myself more and more grumpy for like an entire week. So if any of you have any good ideas re mood boosting naturally, I'd love to hear it.