Wednesday, May 22, 2019

Worst Mother in the World

I'm always afraid that I am messing up as a mother. I let my children stay in pajamas/undies most of the day some days. I let my children watch shows and movies a lot while I try to do homework. I cry in front of my boys, I send them to time out, and sometimes when the time calls for it they get a spanking. Does that make me the worst mother in the world? Gee I sure hope not. I'm not perfect. I suffer from depression and anxiety and it never stops. Some days it's hard to get out of bed. Some days my kids eat nothing but cinnamon sugar toast for breakfast. But they are still alive, they still laugh and smile, they are at the top of the growth charts and just keep going. So maybe I'm doing ok.
I've been doing some serious thinking about getting a tablet for Michael so he can play educational games for a monitored amount of time. But I dont know. I'm back to being a stay-at-home mom and if I don't spend more time helping him write/do crafts/or practice numbers I would feel like a failure. But I dont know where to start really. We do countdowns to special events, and we try to read books. I even got the "I see Sam" books so if he wants we can start working on reading.
I try to be a good member of the church and keep up with my scripture and Come Follow Me studies. I try to share the gospel with the boys because I know that's how things are going now. But with a 4 year old and a 2 year old family home evening is hard to do. Most of the time the lesson revolves around an event of the day/week. (We've been doing a lot of sharing and using nice words). But if I get a lesson in at all I'm happy.
Today my kids ran out of a Mavrick and into the pumping area before I could run after them. Ten minutes later my oldest had a huge accident all over the floor of a Dollar Tree. The workers understood, but a lot of the customers scoffed and stared at me in disgust. I went back to my car, changed my son into clean undies in the parking lot then cried in my car. Does that make me the worst mom in the world? No, it makes me human and vulnerable. Most times I try to just make it day to day. But I keep trying. My boys know I love them. And in the end that's what really matters.

Tuesday, February 12, 2019

Exhausted and wishing

It isn't new information that I struggle with depression. But lately I've been having more trouble with it and I wish my husband and my children didn't have to deal with that. I'm either one extreme or the other and that just makes things worse. I struggle with finding the middle and sometimes it scares me what comes out of my mouth or what thoughts come to my mind. I feel like a terrible mother and a terrible wife because of it. I would never intentionally hurt my boys.

Tyler tries so hard to be there for me through everything, but I know that my constantly changing moods weigh down on him. He works so hard to support out little family. I don't want to put any more pressure on him. I'm afraid that I'm going to push him away to the point where he just can't try anymore.

With everything else I'm struggling with energy, I just want to sleep all the time. I worry too much about my body image, always have though. So I blame my lack of energy for gaining weight and therefore try to compensate for that by eating less or trying to eat healthier and work out. Big surprise? I eat more because of my depression and just feel worse because of it. It is because of this I go in a never ending cycle. I want to pull myself out of this and I've tried a lot of different things, I just haven't found the right thing yet.

Side note- the boys are doing well. We've all kind of had colds for the last week or two. Michael is doing well in Preschool. His teacher loves his empathy. Benjamin is progressing well and is speaking more every day. It still seems weird to me because of Michael's speech delay. They are such good friends (Most of the time) and love playing, dancing and reading books.