The things that I thought would try my patience with toddlers have yet to really bother me. If the kids fight or cry or act like jerks to each other, I can re-direct them, calm them down, and deal with it without it being a problem. Tearing the toilet paper off the roll, sticking their entire hands in the cat's water bowl, basically wreaking a giant path of destruction that I must constantly reign in, those things are cool with me. I can understand why they do that stuff, because mostly they're just exploring their environment and being territorial. When the kids throw tantrums it does not bother me. I find it easy to empathize with how they must be feeling, and I just comfort them.
Except there's the other thing that really, really tries my patience, and that is problems with eating.
I'm sure the whole underweight, extra doctors, extra pressure issues has made this worse. I don't worry as much now as I used to but I do remember worrying all the time about Nora's weight and then getting very, very frustrated when she would not drink her bottle. A couple of times I had to put her down and walk out of the room because otherwise I just wanted to scream. These days it's all about the solid foods, and sometimes the kids have good meals and sometimes they have crappy meals, and usually I'm okay with it but it is definitely a constant annoyance. I hate mess and I hate wet and slimy things. I hate getting anything wet or slimy on my hands, which is too bad because feeding a toddler is akin to putting a vat of soup into a blender, leaving the top off, and then turning it on. Every meal involves wet slimy things all over me, all over them, and all over the floor, the chairs, the table, and sometimes the wall. It means spoons full of pureed food chucked onto the floor, splattering everywhere. It is really obnoxious. Honestly I would rather change 100 diapers than deal with that.
Plus it's just never easy. Just about every spoonful has to be slipped in while they're distracted with other things. I have to employ 20 different tricks within the span of one meal just to get them to eat anything. It's always a struggle, every single meal.
Today in addition to pureed foods I made the following things for the kids: sausage, blueberry pancakes, toast with cream cheese and preserves, potato and leek soup with tons of cheese and cream, and cheddar bacon muffins (full of fatty goodness). Milo tried all of that and Nora tried none of it. None. At dinner, after having spent the day cleaning the floors, making food, doing dishes, and pureeing avocados and bananas, we sat down and she took those muffin bits and said "No!" and immediately threw them on the floor. This mirrored lunch behavior (for the toast with cream cheese) and the breakfast behavior (for the pancakes and sausage). Seriously, oh my God, just TRY it. Then it was soup time, and this is soup that both kids love. Except not tonight. Both kids basically have to hold their own spoon and practice feeding themselves these days while I feed them, or else they will turn their heads and refuse to eat. It is a giant, messy, mess. But tonight after throwing the muffins overboard, Nora would not eat a bite of that soup. Instead she got a giant glob onto her spoon and then instead of putting it into her mouth (which she can do, and usually does), she threw the spoon at me, splattering the soup all over my clothes, the floor, and somehow, inexplicably, the wall.
And that is when I lost it, yelling "arrrrrghhhhh!", I mean, a real yell of frustration. And then both kids immediately started screaming and crying in terror, and Milo practically choked on the muffin he'd been happily eating.
So, to sum up, I am a total asshole, I scared my kids, and I suck at parenting.
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