5 on a Friday: Recent Mom Fails 28/52 (2024)

OH THERE ARE SO MANY TIMES I HAVE BEEN A CRAP MOM THIS SUMMER. HOW TO COUNT THEM??? Well, erm, here are the top 5:

1. Yelling at Jack when he crashed his bike and showed up bleeding.The TL;DR here is that one unfortunate side effect of my summer class is that swim lessons are hard to manage. Minnie can’t do the morning lessons because I am teaching. But the night lessons are hard to swing because Dorothy has dance pick ups around the same time,. We have done our best to carpool, but it’s hard to find kids with the same schedule because of private lessons, etc. SO. At least one night a week, I need Jack or Harry (or sometimes both of them) to help me either watch Minnie before/during her lesson or right after. The other day, I texted Jack between eleventy billion trips down the water slide and asked him to hurry it up already and meet me at the pool so I could get Dorothy. He replied that he was eating and would leave soon, eve though he was supposed to show at 4:30 AT THE VERY LATEST, and it was already after 4:15. We did the slide twice more (ugh you guys—- I love it but am also thinking about the future when she is large enough to stay feet-first on the slide and not get flipped around by the water that whooshes down it and also strong enough to swim with the slide pool current), and I checked Life360 to find HE WAS STILL AT HOME. I called him (while standing up to my thighs in the shallow end because I am classy AF) and said he needed to get to the pool in literally 4 minutes (possible on a bike but maybe not the most fun) and that I was counting on him! We did the slide two more times (heading into serious FML territory) when he FINALLY burst onto the pool deck 4 minutes late. I handed Minnie off (we actually CLIMBED DOWN the water slide stairs instead of sliding down one more time) and stalked away when he was all wait a second, Mom. I need to get a bandaid.I was like that’s your problem, man, here’s your sister— she wants to go on the slide right now.THEN I NOTICED HE WAS BLEEDING from the elbows and knees, and you guys! I barely clocked it— I just said YOUR TODDLER like a pilot ceding control of a plane and left to run home, heat up Dorothy’s buttered noodles, grab Coop fresh from a diving carpool drop, and get Dorothy from jazz tech class. It wasn’t until I got back to the pool a the very end of lessons and prepared to set up a snack shack picnic that I even asked him how he was. Because I am terrible. He had to put the chain back on his bike, even— it was an actual crash. I’m the worst.

2. Freaking OUT because Coop won’t eat home food. Cooper LOVES fast food. And junk food. And any food not from home (except school lunch food because that would be too easy). It’s really hard for Ben and me to keep him fed and also stay out of the drive thru line. His Little League all star team was playing for their summer series last week at districts, and Ben and I made Cooper a meal to eat between diving and baseball because the plan was for Harry to pick him up at diving and take him to his game one night when Be was on-campus, and I was tied up with swim and dance. We asked him the night before what he wanted, and he said he’d eat a bagel, a Zbar, a couple of applesauce pouches (gross, but the only portable fruit he’s into), and some chicken strips cold with honey BBQ sauce. He also packs snacks in his dive bag to eat between dry land and actual diving, so we assumed this would hold him over until he got home around 7 and could eat whatever he wanted. Ben made the chicken strips the night before so Coop could eat some for a snack, and we asked a million times if they were OK or if he wanted something else. He said they were good and he likes them cold, etc. We are really touchy about packed food because sometimes he will decide he doesn’t actually want it because he doesn’t feel hungry but then he is actually very hungry, and his blood sugar crashes, and he ends up crying on the boards or behind the plate and THERE IS NO CRYING IN BASEBALL, etc. WELL. His team won the game, and Coop had 2 great hits, but he begged Harry to take him to a chicken place on the way home. Harry settled for ice cream and didn’t call and ask us to order it ahead but didcomplain about the price and the distractions in the car from the most persistent pestering passenger. (Which completely freaked me out because a 77-year-old woman was killed in a crash on the very highway they were driving on just the previous week— minutes after Dorothy ad I drove past that every same spot, so the distracted teenage driving thing was already on my mind) And then I opened his lunch box to clean it out AND HIS FREAKING FOOD WAS UNTOUCHED. That was the last straw for me. I let him charge lunch at the pool, so he had already eaten a garbage not-home meal! I asked him every possible way if his food was OK before I packed it. And Harry ended up NOT GOLFING that afternoon because he realized he’d have to run home and get Coop’s dinner after golf and before pick up. I could not handle the sight of untouched chicken strips and still full applesauce and an unbitten bagel, etc etc etc. I cried. OVER CHICKEN STRIPS. I might have PMS (but who is to say because my cycle is bananas—I might just be this unhinged forever). I guess I need to realize that fast food might be better than conflict food and structure things accordingly? Probably telling Cooper that he can no longer do any activities over the dinner hour ever again because he has to be home to eat is… not the answer. (But yes, I did say that).

3. Being extra in all the ways about the a/c.We have had a blessedly cool summer so far (please universe do not let me have just summoned a heat dome for Madison by typing those words) with the occasional 90+ day here and there and maybe 2 in a row this week. But! Our 13 y/o a/c is NOT DOING ITS JOB SUPER WELL and fails to meet the target temp (which is 67 and might be optimistic in the Midwest humidity). I had a guy out to fix it for TWELVE HUNDRED DOLLARS MY GOD. He said it needed to be cleaned and have some coolant added and also some leaks fixed which happens with chemicals or by magic? Not clear on the deets. It is quieter? But also can’t stay at 67 even on an 80-degree day? I hate it. I put a post it note on the thermostat so I can’t see the temp, but I KNOW WHEN IT IS 68 IN THE HOUSE. Keeping the house cool might structure our comings and goings, is what I am saying. The kids are literally walking around in blankets, and Minnie slept in winter jammies last night after crying because she was cold after bath. I WAS SWEATING THO.

4. Overcooking my brownies and also buying a milk chocolate mix instead of the fudge mix we all love. NO ELABORATION NECESSARY, but movie night was ruined, you guys.