Messy

I'm looking back at my last post about my happy mommy moment and realizing that I jinxed myself by writing that.  Things pretty much went downhill from that point.  Right now I am eating a big handful of peanut m&ms, and that's helping a lot, but earlier tonight I threw a big pot of spaghetti into the kitchen sink and had to actually leave the house so as not to frighten the children with the fit of rage I was experiencing.  Not that they were not alarmed with the spaghetti throwing, but I really didn't know what was coming next.  I'm not normally all that emotionally unstable, but lately I feel like I'm on edge all the time.  I have been struggling so much with Ruby lately, and she with me, and the frustration of seeing so much of the work we've both done over the past year erode away is really stressful.  I will probably be able to see everything more clearly when I have more distance, but when I'm stuck in this daily push and pull, it's hard to know exactly what is going on.  Ruby is now 27 months, which is the same age I remember things getting really hard with Finn, my oldest.  But in that case, that was also right when Gus was born, so I attributed much of his behavior to his displeasure at having to share the limelight with the interloper.  Gus at 27 months, on the other hand, was the easiest child in the world.  We kept holding our collective breath, waiting for him to hit a bad stage, and it never happened.  He's just one of those kids that it's hard to be mad at.  So maybe I sort of convinced myself that Ruby would be easy like Gus, or that, being a girl, she would be sweet all the time.  Who knows, but I'm all of the sudden plunged back into the fun of temper tantrums, out and out defiance, time outs, and self-recrimination over letting my own temper get the best of me in the moment.  I did spent 30 seconds today on Amazon, ordering Love & Logic, which we somehow lost in the move a few years back, and I'm awaiting its arrival with a slightly hysterical eagerness.  Perhaps the wise guidance of the love & logic method will shape me into the parent I really, really want to be.  The one who does not yell at a two-year old, or throw pasta across the kitchen before storming out of the house.  I want to be one who makes my children's lives easier, not be doing things for them or buying them things they don't need, but by giving them the gift of security and of knowing there are people who love them no matter what they do or where they are.  There are so many new terms for different types of parents - helicopter parents, tiger mothers, etc.  I can't think of a term for what kind of parent I would like to be, but I thought today of an image - actually from the movie Up, of a big cluster of balloons, holding my children up above the world, letting them cut the strings little by little as they find their places in the world.  That seems so peaceful and safe, whereas each day falls pretty far short of that little scenario.  However, it seems that each day does finally end, and a new one begins again with somewhat of a clean slate.  If everything is not erased, maybe it will have receded enough to not feel so raw.  Hopefully a better story to be written over the ugly words and missed opportunities of the day before.