Calling All Playground Monitors

We behave better in public, don't we?

None of us has unleashed our loudest scream, our roughest grab, our meanest retort while standing with other moms at the playground, right? We save such behavior for those days when the walls are closing in and the only witnesses are under four feet high.

I'm facing one of those days head on right now. It's 8:30 in the morning and I've been up for two and a half hours. I've already initiated three time outs and settled a handful of fights. I've listened to the boys scream at each other and yell at their sisters. I should be doing laundry and washing dishes. I need to have the kids clean their rooms. I should unpack and make room for the new set of dishes we were given. I should clean off my desk so that I can make room for my brain to function.

But all I can really do right now is hope that I make it through the next ten minutes without exploding at my kids. Anyone who is not a mother may not understand just how literally true it is that I cannot do any single thing for more than five minutes without being interupted by one, two, three or more requests or demands. I can't move through a single room with being pulled in 10 different directions, none of them the one I had hoped to go.

So I figured: use the blog. So you, dear readers (all 6 of you), are hereby transformed into the other moms at the playground. I hereby pledge to act as if I'm mothering my children in your presence, in the hopes that you will keep a lid on my temper and my yells down to a meaningful growl.

My goal is to be able to announce tonight that the playground monitors did their job and I didn't lose my cool with the kids. It's a day when I am painfully aware that these kids will learn from my example. They will deal with adversity as they see me deal with a long holiday with everyone home when there is too much to do and no way in hell to get it all done. Here's hoping that when I post again tonight, I am able to say (without lying) that I didn't do too badly and that even if I didn't keep everyone smiling, I didn't do any real damage to their psyches.

Here's hoping.