And Mom has a meltdown . . .

Well, it was bound to happen sometime. I know you've all been waiting for it, and I'm a bit surprised it didn't happen sooner. In the perfect storm of life, lots of factors came together today to cause me to lose it, including those things that shorten a mom's temper before she even gets a chance to deal with the children. I blame it on several nights of terrible sleep (I do not function well when my sleep gets interrupted!), but I'm going out on a limb here to suggest that it might have just a little something to do with whining. Whining children. Who I would call whining teens, but the maturity level was a little suspect today.

To begin with, Linnea has these big baking plans, but her life is not making it possible for her to do everything she wants to get done. She is also a perfectionist, who starts in on a recipe and proceeds to check and double check each step. With me. Even when I am involved with something else. So this afternoon she had a short amount of time, a lot of tasks, a lot of questions and a messy kitchen. Which got messier. Which would be fine, if it got cleaned up. It didn't.

Then, Sabine came home to discover that, "All the pretzels are gone? Again?" There were tears. Neither Linnea nor Sabine put their best foot forward when dealing with that crisis. There was bickering. And whining.

I  might have told them to stop speaking. Forever. Especially to each other.

Finally, I figured out that in order to have our usual family dinner, we would have to eat at 4:30 (never going to happen) or 7:30. Okay, leaving Tim out of family dinner (when you're gone for 4 hours over dinnertime, really, what am I supposed to do?), we can eat at 5:30. Perfect. Except . . . Caroline can't eat dairy before running. "Baked mac&cheese? I can't eat that and then do a hill workout!" So, 7:30 it is.

And, guess who's cooking? That would be me.

Somewhere between Sabine's tears; Linnea's 101 questions about measuring spoons; Caroline hoping to avoid kitchen clean-up, running and having a good attitude; and Tim needing the car (and directions, "can you Mapquest it, Mom?") Mom lost it.

Today, this project is hard. This life is hard. Parenting is hard. And I didn't put my best foot forward. As Mr. Slinger says in the picture book Lily's Purple Plastic Purse, "Today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better." I hope he's right!

Oh, and remember Linnea's double checking of her recipes and asking me all the questions? Guess who didn't double check her recipe and forgot to add the lemon juice to her lemon poppyseed bread?

Yeah. That would also be me.