kids for sale: two cents

Location: the couch
Mood: worn out
Listening to: Numb3rs on TV

I’m starting to understand how, after being faced with day after day and night after night of no assistance and doing it all themselves, some parents just "check out" and start going through the motions. 

Chloe woke me up at five today, a full hour before my alarm was due to go off.  Fifteen minutes later Ben was up.  I drove to town and sat through five hours of class on about four hours of sleep, drove home, hung out at mom’s for a bit while Ben had his afternoon nap.  I figured, hey, both kids have been up since the crack of dawn, they’ll go down easy tonight. 

Oh, how wrong I was. 

Three hours is how long it took me to get both kids in bed.  I don’t know what the hell Chloe’s issue is lately but she will not lay still and go to sleep.  I’ll lay her down, start to put Ben to sleep, and she will get up off the couch and just go apeshit for no reason at all.  Tearing up furniture and toys, digging around in the trash, clanging around and making noise so that I can’t get Ben to sleep.  Then I have to put Ben down to put her back on the couch and I have to start all over again because Ben is wide awake again. 

I’m almost to the point where I’m nearly willing to babygate her into her bedroom (which is right off the living room, not in Siberia) to force her to lay down on her own bed and go to sleep.  Almost. 

I will admit freely: I’m not proud of some of the parenting moments I’ve had over the past couple of weeks.  I’ve shouted, I’ve yelled.  I’ve even spanked Chloe a few times, because she has started swandiving off the chair in the living room onto the jumparoo when Ben is in it.  Talking isn’t working, time out isn’t working.  Consistency is an issue because I can’t always drop everything I’m doing with Ben to punish her. 

I need to get away, to recharge my mommy batteries before I end up completely burnt out.  I find myself taking "short cuts" more and more, and I don’t like that about myself. 

Aaron’s coming tomorrow, and I’ve already told him that I’m taking four or five hours for myself and taking off when he gets here.  I need it, before I go nuts.