Parenting

Last night, at 10 pm, Ethan was still not asleep and was wriggling around his bed. "Mom, I need a drink." Ok. I hate being thirsty and I always drink at night, so I bring him a drink. A few minutes later, "Mom, I need to go to the BATHroom." Ok, no problem. Better to use the toilet than wet the bed. I bring him to the bathroom, set him on the toilet, he does his thing, I lift him off, help him get his jammies back up, we wash his hands and dry them. We are done.

Suddenly, tears and shrieks and hollering. "MOM! I NEED TO DRY THE OTHER HAND!" "Ok, go ahead and dry it off," I tell him.
"But I want YOU to do it," he insists.

Here's where the tired and cranky mom kicked in. She refused to help him dry his hand. He is perfectly capable of doing it himself. More shrieks and tears, grouchy mom grabs him and dumps him in his room with the gate up. "Mom, I want to BEEEE with you!" Grouchy mom ignores his request, enters kitchen and contemplates mounds of dirty dishes. After a few minutes, grouchy mom hears little boy talking to her from his bedroom, but she can't understand him because she is listening to glorious Mozart violin concerto #5, attempting to motivate herself to wash dishes. It is Mozart's 250th birthday today, by the way.

So, grouchy mom goes to little boy's room. "Mom, when you do something, you need to say sorry," he says, looking at me. Remorse and denial. "Did I do something?" I ask. "I brought you a drink, I helped you go the bathroom, I helped you wash your hands... and then I got mad." He keeps looking at me, with his big brown eyes and beautiful eyelashes. "I'm sorry," I tell him. "I'm sorry, too," he says. "Can you forgive me?" I ask him. He grins and opens his arms up wide and gives me a squeeze around the neck. We are friends again. When I leave his room, he settles down and goes to sleep.

Parenthood is so frustrating sometimes that you want to rip your hair out and so sweet sometimes that your heart seems to swell and then melt. Is there anything else like it?