Life Lessons From a 1 Year Old

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen a picture and caption  on Sunday that alluded to the fact that I had a less than relaxing weekend.

Let me start by giving some praise to all the mommas out there to more than 1 kid.  I’m truly amazed by you…now go pour yourself a glass of wine. 

Ok, back to this weekend…

We drove to Austin Saturday morning to go to my sweet cousin Claire’s high school graduation party.  I was excited to see some family I haven’t seen in a while, and excited for Lincoln to meet some new people.  The rest of my family that was traveling was spending the night in a hotel, so we thought “Sure!  Why shouldn’t we? Let’s make a weekend out of it.”  Even though we’ve never taken Lincoln to a hotel before.

Linc napped in the car a little bit on the way to Austin, but woke up at about 10 am screaming his head off.  Ugh. So, we stopped at Buc-ee’s in Bastrop for a little break, and then finished up the drive to Austin.

Now I don’t know if anyone else does this, but I am constantly calculating nap times in my head.  So, I’m thinking, “He woke up at 10, he’s going to have to take another nap at some point before we go out to dinner at 7:30.”  Claire’s party was from noon-3, so we’d have plenty of time to squeeze a nap in after that.

We had a great time at the party celebrating Claire’s accomplishments, and I enjoyed chatting with some folks I haven’t seen in a long time.  Maybe I’m just overly critical as a mom, but I felt like Linc was being really whiny the whole time.  Which is why when I had a few people tell me how good he was, I thought…

 

It’s about 3:30 when we leave the party to go to the hotel room, which we were splitting with my parents.  The rooms were totally overpriced at $160 a night, so I was more than willing to share a room.  It’s at this point I realize, “What the heck am I thinking?”.  My kid, who sleeps with blackout curtains, a sound machine, in a room by himself is going to nap in an unfamiliar room, in his uncomfortable pack n play, occupied by 4 other people??

I’m sure you can figure out where this is going.

Long story short, there was no nap.  After a failed attempt to turn the bathroom into a “nursery”, a car ride around Austin to get him to sleep, and a mishap with the hotel rooms that put 8 of us in one room for about an hour, I had one tired and cranky kid. 

I’m always dumbfounded by how kids can be dead tired, but they refuse to go to sleep.  Seriously, you’re cranky because you’re tired, you’ve been given ample opportunities to sleep.  Just. Go. To. Sleep.

I mean, this is a child who still takes 2 naps a day and doesn’t go more than 4 or 5 hours without sleeping.  And now we’re going on 9 hours.

At this point it’s time to go to dinner, so we load up and head to The Salt Lick to meet the rest of our party of 35.  Why I thought this was still a good idea, I have no idea.

Don’t you just love how cameras and social media can capture a seemingly sweet moment?  What you don’t see in this picture is in about 3.7 seconds this kid is going to completely lose his mind.

The rest of the story goes like this: we get there, visit, order our food all while Chase and I are passing a gremlin back and forth between us.  Once we start to eat, I’m thinking some food will calm Lincoln down.

No.

He goes from gremlin to full on exorcist mode, and at that point Chase and I pay our ticket, pack up our uneaten meal and head back to the hotel.  I was hungry, I was embarrassed, and the worst part was I only got 2 sips of my desperately needed adult beverage before I had to just leave it there.

We got back to the hotel at about 10:00 (count it…12 hours of no sleep for Linc), we put him to bed and proceeded to eat our BBQ in the bathroom so we didn’t wake him up. We forgot to grab any kind of cutlery, so I had to eat my potato salad with a pickle spear.  No lie.

If you’re wondering how we slept…we didn’t.  Not well anyway.  We were up at 4:30 and 6:00 with a crying kid who’s been sleeping through the night since he was 6 months old.  Once the sun came up, we packed up our stuff and we were out of there.

But not before ending our weekend on a good note: Linc and my first trip to Krispy Kreme!

On the car ride home I had a lot of time to reflect on the weekend (and the last year or so really).

As a mom, being honest with yourself and others can be difficult at times.  Nobody wants to seem like they don’t have it all together, and often times we use our children as little trophies to showcase our accomplishments as parents.  Whether that’s through your child’s academics, ability to make friends, good manners, or just having a well behaved kid.  I don’t know if there is a single parent out there that doesn’t love having nice things said about their children.  Nobody wants people to look at their kid like that child.

You know the one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(I have no idea who that is, but thank you Google!)

Truthfully, I didn’t know much about kids before I had Lincoln.  My family is pretty small, so before Linc we hadn’t had another baby in the family in over a decade.  My knowledge of kids extended as far as TV and movies, and what I thought kids should be like.  Yes, I was a 1st grade teacher for almost 10 years…but I’m talking about toddlers.  Put me in a room with 25 six-year-olds, and I can go all day.  Toddlers are just…scary.

I’ll admit, I could be pretty dang judgmental about other parents before I became a mom.

Throwing a tantrum?

Telling your parents no?

Throwing your food on the floor?

Whining for absolutely no apparent reason?

“My goodness, control your kid.”, “They’re only acting like that because you let them.”, “My child will never be allowed to act like that.” are all thoughts I had and are words I’m forced to eat now as a mom to a 1 1/2 year old.

Because guess what?  That is so my child.  And sometimes I lose my identity as a mom solely in how my child is behaving.  Especially when you feel the whole world watching.  Because let’s get real…your child isn’t going to show their true colors in the privacy of your home.  It’s when you’re at the grocery store, a restaurant, the post office, a play date.  Or at least it seems that way.

With that being said, I can’t imagine a more rewarding job than being a mom.  I feel blessed every day that I am the mom to a sweet, rambunctious little boy that definitely challenges me at times.  But that’s part of what being a parent is.  I can’t expect my children to just know how to act, or even live up to my sometimes unrealistic expectations (like being well behaved even though you haven’t slept in 12 hours).  All I can do is have patience while I teach, model, and pray for them to not live up to my expectations…but Jesus’.  And as parents, I know we are doing our best to raise our children in a Godly way, and I also know that God will honor that.

And man, did we get a lesson in that this weekend.