To give you an example of what I'm talking about, here's a highlight from my week. We went to Applebee's for dinner with friends while Husband was gone. Things aren't going too badly, but then the kids break down in literally a matter of seconds. Sunshine spilled an entire glass of water across the table. As I'm cleaning up the water, Monster starts whining about how he is still hungry and begins to throw a fit because I won't order him more food. I had just ordered him more food about 5 minutes before. While I'm dealing with the spill and the whining, Sunshine spills another glass of water, this time all over herself. I pick her up to dry her off and Monster starts sobbing uncontrollably Sunshine is screaming at the top of her lungs for me to stop and she's hitting me. Monster keeps screaming, "No, Mommy! Don't!" It seems like I beat my children. As I'm fighting Sunshine to dry her off, I ask Monster what he thinks I'm going to do and he tells me he doesn't want me to put his sister in the car. I calmly explain I have to dry her off. The whole restaurant is staring.
That evening, I took time. Time to just think. Time to evaluate. Several things that I came up with were that, first, I was being too hard on myself. Second, I was being too hard on my kids. We just have bad days. It happens. I knew right then, though, that nothing was going to get better if I let it all get to me. The rest of the week was awful, too, but my mindset was different. I still felt like I was drowning, but I could at least see a floatation device coming toward me. It gave the strength to keep fighting. By last night, my whole out look had changed. So had the kids'. Everyone was calmer.
My weekend will be better. Next week will be a new week, with new challenges, but I'll face them. There will be more bad weeks. However, there will be so many more good ones as well.