hard times

I placed the "whining chair" in front of a mirror because even little Mary becomes distracted from her anger by the contorted expression of fury on her slender face. Lately, everything makes her frustrated. Lately, I've been busier than usual encouraging the use of words, polite words, instead of screams and wild gestures.  

I had forgotten (Can you believe that is even possible?) how hard it is to be three. You're finally old enough to have these really great ideas, like wearing high-heeled dress-up shoes to Church, eating sugar straight from the canister, taking your older sister's Hello Kitty stickers from out of her desk drawer and decorating your bedroom wall with them, forgoing pants, and then they're shot down, those genius plans - every one of them. There are ants, too, creepy ants; sometimes, when your eating cereal, a drop of milk from your spoon lands on your nightgown. And naps! Oh, my gosh! Oh the cruelty of being needlessly interrupted and forced to lie down. 

All my kids went through this. Elijah especially and since he was my firstborn, I took it so, so personally. I can remember now both of us laid out on the couch in tears, exhausted and just plain sad from butting heads over everything. 

I still get exasperated, (I mean, how can you not?) but experience is slowly quieting those accusatory voices in my head berating me for my lack of parenting skills and my child for his or her lack of maturity and discipline.  I put forth genuine effort not to add to stressful and sometimes embarrassing situations undeserved speculations about my sons' or daughters' long term characters, based on these short term stages of development and self-awareness. 

 This too shall pass should be tattooed on the forehead of every toddler, every preschooler, every moody adolescent and impulsive teenager. Weather the storms and bask in the love, the laughter (because three year-olds are also very, very funny), the invaluable discoveries about ourselves and our expanding resilience - that's what we do as moms. And then we pray because these kids aren't mini-versions of ourselves, we don't own them, they aren't robots we can program into submission. They were placed in our care for a time by God, Himself, for us to adore, care for physically, spiritually, emotionally, lead by example.  

Someday, Mary will wake up, like Elijah does now, get dressed, have breakfast, and make it through a morning of errands without breaking down into fits of hysteria over trivial things that seem huge when you're small.  She will clamor for independence and I will squirm inwardly, longing for the days when things were less complicated - when she wanted nothing more than to be held by me, when we'd spend the afternoon in the wooden "whining chair" staring at our reflections, discussing the importance of "pleases" and "thank yous," snuggling, apologizing, and for the 100,000th time, starting over.