Our Broken Day

Anyone who doesn't have children can easily say, " I just can't imagine why anyone would ever hurt a child." Yet, anyone who does (and who's honest) can imagine real easy. Anyone who has survived this battlefield called "being two," knows exactly what I mean. Today was a challenge for us all. A challenge for Judah to obey mommy. a challenge for Mommy to obey God, and a challenge for Kenton to know how to keep us all sane.
Long story short, I don't accept the crime of biting off your spoon handle and gnawing on it as petty, and especially after the fifth time during breakfast. Judah wasn't accepting five timeouts as a good enough reminder. After the fifth timeout in 15 minutes, I quickly lost my cool and yanked the "froggy stool" that Judah found amusing during time out away and went into my room wishing it were sound proof. After a few seconds of sputtering noises that went a little like, "ehr! AHr! pssstss! ah! ehh!" I threw the stool down only to find it couldn't handle my frustration either.
Once again to one without children, this seems ridiculous, but everyone else knows how the unimportant have the magical power to escalate into the end of the world.
After an SOS text message to Kenton that read "Help. ASAP call!" He talked me down from the ledge, and the wise words of "never deal with a drunk" came running into my head. Therefore "drunk" Judah and his "drunk" mommy took a long break from oneanother and sobered up.

We started over about an hour later. He had a power nap, I did some laundry, and drank a wonderful Diet Dr. Pepper at 8:30 in the morning.
Our do-over went better, until he had his crashing moment and fell outside gaining his first legitimate "Owie." He called my name in a tone that causes a mother's heart to freeze. Knowing he'd survive this first of many pavement kisses, I assured him he was alright. I carried him in and washed his wounds and began to tear up as I looked at where his once perfect skin existed, and where now he had a permanent broken mark from this day.


I instantly recalled my first meeting with him. I remembered how his skin was perfect that day, how he was perfect that day. I couldn't contain my emotions. Everything from "I'm Sorry," to "How could I get so angry with this perfect child?" ran through my head. I finished off the care with a Spiderman band-aid and several hugs, that were more for me than him. I was grateful for that moment. I was glad to let him know I'll always be here to help him through his pain.
What a cursed blessing to be a mother or a parent for that matter.
You get the horrible responsibility of loving your child enough to discipline them, however you get to be the one who can "make it all better"
We finished our broken day by a terrific trip to the zoo.

We saw the reptiles today. But more importantly we pieced back together our broken day. I was able to leave thanking God for this horrible joy of mothering a two year old.