Confessions of a Jerk Mom

Luke, being painfully awkward.

My weirded out little deer.

The jerk mom, with tears in her eyes, as Luke brought me his carefully hand wrapped and hand made Christmas present.

Julia, sick, tired, and miserable because of her jerk Mom.

Jerk Mom helping Jules to stand with the rest of her class.

This post is being guest written by the resident Jerk Mom. The generally tries to be caring, thoughtful, energetic and mostly forward thinking Mom has, apparently, left the premises.

Tuesday was the kids preschool Christmas program. They were sick. I mean, not contagious, but not well. (I'm editing upon rereading this to say that they probably WERE contagious. Who knows? Not me. Saying that they were not contagious was a way for me to feel like less of a jerk, but it just isn't necessarily true. I apologize. I probably got other kids sick and ruined their Christmas. Gah) I ignored all wisdom. I ignored their needs. I thought about how much I wanted to see their first ever Christmas program. I thought about how I wanted to see them sing the songs that they run around the house singing 24/7. I thought about how I wanted to see their classmates, and fellow parents, and basically about everything other than the good old fashioned "what will be best for my kids?" bit.

And, I suffered, and ~ worst ~ THEY suffered. I never should have brought them. We should have stayed safely home. We should have stayed in our pajamas, in our house, with our germs, and with our sick, fragile emotional states. Instead I dressed them up, carted them off, made Jake and Jules sit through Luke's program, then made Luke and Jake sit through Julia's program. Both kids did not prance and dance, do silly hand motions, and sing. Luke stood in the very front row, and the second that the paparazzi like hoard of parents started in with the cameras and video taping and whatnot, my never shy boy looked as though he was standing naked in front of a firing squad. I have never seen my son look so.....just so......awkward. It was half hilarious, and half terribly sad. He did not sing. He did give one or two terribly unenthusiastic jingles with his bell, and hit some sticks together half heartedly, but he did not sing. He was so cute and awkward that it just about broke my heart. He was not himself.

The kids rallied for the "snack" of cookies, and Luke's teachers graciously invited Julia to sit at the table with her brother and his classmates. They held hands and were generally precious. It was a brief moment of lovely in the miasma of my bad decisions.

Then, we gathered up our 3000 coats and bags and whatnot and dragged our sorry ass sweaty hot and now sugar laden ensemble down the hall to Julia's class. *Enter meltdown*. My Jules, my brave, composed, confident girl, dissolved into a puddle. Giant, round, fat, selfish-jerk-mom created tears coursed down her pink cheeks. She was completely, and totally out of whack. I sat next to her as the preschool jerk mom guest star in her Christmas program. I was just about the same height as the kids, so I didn't stand out too much. To her credit, she did rally. Her poor, sick little self tried so hard to overcome the fact that her jerk mom forced her into a situation that she simply was not equipped to handle in her ill state. I was proud of her, and she did sing the very last song, for which I give her resilient little spirit much credit. I was ashamed of myself.

I admit to being stir crazy. With Jake cutting his first tooth he barely napped all week. He was up at night. Luke and Julia were up several times a night, crying. For the past 5 nights Nate and I did some bizarre dance of nighttime comforting/bed swapping/waking up in the morning with various kids in various rooms. Jake nursed CONSTANTLY. I was sick (twice), first with that stomach thing and then with the virus/mess of a throat thing that the kids have. I have cleaned the same messes 4000 times and vacuumed the house twice a day, yet it is still messy. I am a raging ass. I made a bad decision, selfishly. I wanted to get us out of the house, and I did it against all common wisdom, and we all suffered as a result.

I got in the car post Christmas program massacre, and cried the whole way home.

The kids have not left the house since (that was Tuesday AM). They are finally really on the road to health, but I admit that my sanity is wavering. I am short tempered, and my empathy well is running bone dry. All of the wonderful Christmas joy that I had feels positively wrung out. I feel frustrated, and incompetent, and like a jerk Mom.

I looked at our stockings and our tree and tried to remember that in two days Christmas is going to be all over, and it hit me like a ton of bricks that this week has just been total crap. Because I have been feeling so lousy physically, I have totally lacked creativity. Instead of using our time in the house to create art projects or bake cookies or do anything joyous, I have pretty much just stood around with a wild dazed look in my eyes thinking about all of the ways that I am failing at everything. When the kids and I are sick at the very same time, everything feels impossible. Just impossible.

I know that "this too shall pass". I know that they won't be forever scarred. I might be, but they won't be. I know that in my soul. But man, in these moments where my nerves are raw and my patience is gone and I find myself NOT being a nurturing mother (but instead some sort of fishwife jerkface who yells) I feel terribly low. I feel like I need to offer up a giant apology to my children, to my husband, to my laundry and floors and to the people who I wish I was out bringing homemade cookies to. I feel like I want to apologize to the universe in general.

This job is really hard. On normal days, I feel pretty together. I can generally hold my head high and say that I do my best. This week, not so much, This week, my best was pretty craptastic, frankly.