Daphne is in my business from the time she wakes up until she crashes in her bed at night. This non-stop in-my-face means that she pulls on my legs to be held while my hands are wet from washing dishes; she closes the dryer door while I’m still folding newly dried clothes or putting in wet ones from the washer; she sits on the counter next to the hot stove while I’m making our lunch; she plays in the bathroom while I’m using the facilities; she screams to bounce on the bed while I’m making it. Which means: I rarely do the dishes or the laundry or make the beds. I sit in a dirty house to avoid fights from the little one.
It’s too much. I need a little space and the girl is unwilling to give it.
When she finally goes to bed at night I turn into a zombie on the couch. But there is still more to do. Laundry and dishes and grocery shopping. GROCERY SHOPPING. I haven’t done a really good grocery run in two weeks, which means I duck into Dillon’s and back out with enough food for a meal or two. (And I hate Dillon’s. They’re overpriced with a poor selection and I really hate giving them my money. But right now it’s the best I can do.) It also means we’ve been eating out nearly every day. But there is little point in trying to menu plan with a teeny girl who promptly sits on my lap and grabs the ink pen so that she can scribble all over my list.
Sometimes in the mornings I plan to hug her and squeeze her and give her kisses and read with her until she’s tired of me and let’s me go about my business. But that does not work. Instead I devote an hour, hour-and-a-half just to Daphne Time, and as soon as I get up to pour myself a cup of coffee she’s following me, pulling on my leg to pick her up.
A resolve will enter my head that I’ll change the way I parent her. I’ll make her cry it out when I can’t attend to her immediate need and I’ll make her scream in the shopping cart just so that I can get food from Target, but I’m not going to change the way I parent her. I raised Gideon and Mia the same way and I really like the way they turned out. They’re confident, sweet, easy to get along with, role models in their classes and outstanding academically. I think if I can just make it through this season then it’ll be okay. But through this season I’m really on edge.