Red Pen Mama

In a recent trip around my little blog-o-sphere, I found two people who know what I’m going through.

MaryP goes through it with kids who are not even her own (God bless her!).
Dad Gone Mad goes through it with his adoring daughter.

The endless round of questions and comments. The ones that are repeated over and over and over and… you know. Regardless of the answer, the explanation. It doesn’t end; it doesn’t stop.

Recently, in the absence of the nap, and my inability to enforce Monkey’s quiet time (short of tying her to the bed), I thought that if she joined me in the kitchen as I made cherry walnut muffins she would be sufficiently occupied and/or distracted.

Instead, I barely got muffins made. The noise didn’t stop: “Can I have a spoon? Can I do that? Can I hold the egg? Can I stir it?” Answering no just let to escalation: “I have to want to stir that!” “I have to want a spoon!” Answering “in a minute” led to more questioning: “Can I hold it? Can I hold it? Can I hold it?” I finally staved her off by having her line the muffin tin with paper cup liners, and then letting her continue to play with them (on the shopping list: new paper cup liners for muffin pan).

It is the shocking amount of noise my toddler makes that is getting to me (these days, anyway). A day or two before the muffin incident, I had to send Monkey next door. I needed the silence. She was making me nuts! I don’t know how to describe it, except to say that sometimes I have to tell Monkey, “Please go in the other room. Mommy needs quiet time.” That usually doesn’t work for very long, as you can imagine.

I also know that my PMS is making it worse. I swear before I had children, my PMS was barely noticeable (to me, anyway; ex-boyfriends, family members, and DearDR may have a different take on this). My period recently resumed (while I was on vacation as a matter of fact), and about a week or 10 days beforehand, I am extremely emotional. Monkey was running up and down the yard the other day, yelling her head off, and I was overcome by how beautiful she was, her perfect little body hurtling through space, how she is not a baby anymore, and I was literally getting choked up, and I stopped and thought, “Oh, I must be PMS’ing” because I am not usually such a wet noodle.

So the combination of PMS and the endlessly chattering thing that is my toddler is deadly to my nerves. I get frayed very quickly.

And I also recently thought, “Well, does the effect of hormones on my emotions make those emotions invalid?” I mean, in the absence of PMS, would I still be driven crazy by the Monkey? Would I still have to send her away from me? Or would I be able to handle it because even though she were getting on my nerves those same nerves are not awash in PMS hormones?

Is this making sense?

How do you make a hormone?
Don’t pay her.

(Thank you, Lori, the Midwife).