My Recent Frustrations

-I am soooo emotional with this pregnancy. The smallest things make my facial muscles tense up and my eyes sting, like I'm going to cry. But any time I get emotional, I feel so sick, and crying almost guarantees that I will throw up, or have to work very hard to force myself to stop crying so I don't throw up. I've been on anti-nausea medicine for a week or so, which has been working well, except for when I get emotional. I've gotten emotional with: Christmas songs, sad scenes in movies or on TV, watching the news, hearing people's tough stories...I cannot handle it right now. I've started avoiding these things like crazy.

-I am so irritable. I'm having a hard time with a lot of things....so tired of chores, the endless cycle of cleaning dirty stuff, only to have it get dirty again almost immediately. Washing dishes, putting them away, washing clothes, folding them, putting them away (more like cramming them away, I feel like there's never enough room in our closet/drawers), the constant nagging of ironing clothes and mending clothes (which I know I need to but rarely do), getting stains out. And DIAPERS!!! I'm so exasperated with diapers! I've got a baby on the way, and I'm fine with the fact that I've only got more diapers coming (with this new baby), but my 3-year-old's diapers! Arghhh!!! We've been working on potty-training for a long time, my daughter has done fairly well for a week or so at a time, one time, for like, 3 weeks, she stayed pretty much dry all day long (still wetting night diapers and still taking care of #2 in her diaper/pullup), but I thought we were past that. But NO! She went back to wetting more often during the day. Then, she stopped wiping (without someone telling her to); she'd pee in the toilet and slip off as soon as she was done, which was frustrating.  And now, she has like, completely given up all together. She NEVER uses the potty. I know she knows how to. I've offered incentives that she acts all excited about. She acts like she totally gets it and understands it. But she WON'T use the TOILET!! She will go in her diaper, in her pull-up, in her panties (she'll go all day long in different pairs of panties...she'll go through 5 or more panties a day...she doesn't like being wet, but she's changed right away...I can't let her get pee all over the carpet, furniture, etc), and she'll go au naturel. Lots of people swear by letting their kid run around with nothing on. It worked one time. My daughter said, "I have to go potty! No diaper on!" But other than that, it didn't work. She'd just stand in a puddle going, "uh-oh" and do it again. She's even gone #2 while standing up, with nothing on, standing on the carpet. That was not a good day. I've tried keeping her on the potty for a long time. She won't go, but then she'll mess up her diaper/pull-up/panty as soon as she gets it on again. I've tried sitting her on the toilet frequently. She has a princess potty seat that we put on top of a regular toilet (although she's used a toilet successfully without one on, both at home, and in public), but I have REFUSED to get her a mini, portable potty that sits on the floor. If they're potty-trained just with the mini-one, that's NOT potty-trained. I don't want her to take that thing all over the house. That's no different that just wearing a diaper, and that is DISGUSTING to clean up. I could just limit it where the thing HAS to be in the bathroom at all times, but I still don't see how that's any better than just going in a diaper. At least you can just trash an icky diaper. To me, the mini potty just adds an unnecessary and disgusting step to being potty-trained. Anything I've read, and the only thing I can come up with now, is we just need to wait. Wait until she decides she's done with diapers. I remember being really hesitant to do new things when I was little. Apparently, I was a nightmare to potty-train too, although I don't think I was this bad. But what I don't get is that she's done this before (she's never really done poo in the potty, but she has with pee). I know she can do it because she's gone through periods of staying dry before. Soo frustrating.

-I got married 2 weeks after I turned 20. Had my first child 2 years later. Can't say I'd do it any differently if I could do it all over again, but lately I've been having a lot of "what-if" thoughts. My whole life, I thought that being a wife and mom (furthermore, a housewife, and a stay-at-home mom) would be my thing. I felt like I was MADE for those roles, and that I'd fit in so comfortably, and would so enjoy life when that time came. Sigh. Let's just say that's not how I'm feeling now that that IS my life. I mean, I love my family, and I'm glad I can stay home and take care of my child during the day, but when I see pictures of someone's wonderful European vacation, and I'm at home with the theme song of "Busytown" (a cartoon) stuck in my head...it's hard.

-I hate school. I HATE school. I hated school, and I still hate school. Technically, I don't have to deal with school right now. My husband and I both graduated college, him with a master's degree. And my daughter is only 3 and I haven't bothered with preschool. But my husband has all these tests and extra stuff to do as part of his career, so he's got to spend so much time studying outside of his work hours. And I just found out that if my daughter starts Kindergarten here, she can start fall of 2013. In a year and a half. I thought I had 2 1/2 years left til that happened. So, between all that, I feel like I am never going to get a break from being involved with school. Oh, I hate school. I hate how much time it takes out of each day, even for very young kids, not to mention that transportation to and from school (here, they bus kids all over the city so that each school is "diversified" or something), and the homework. I did well in school. I was well-behaved, though very quiet and shy. I got into, and graduated from, a good university. I like the having done it. But I did not like the doing it. I could have made much better grades in college, I think. If I had felt compelled to study and work at it more than I did. But I HATED it. Few people actually ENJOY studying, but I seriously hated it and was repulsed by it. College was better than high school. It was more of the college life and the freedom I enjoyed. It's not like I did crazy things with the freedom. I just liked being on my own, arranging my own life, more or less. Not being under the constant eye of authority. Had I had a different high school experience, I might not be so hateful toward school, I suppose. But I lived in an area where they had to be really strict to keep the school from falling into a truly scary place, from being a really "bad" school, like most of the schools in the next county were. But I remember not liking school when I was younger (ok, not many little kids like school, but still). In Kindergarten, my mom and I had this routine every single day on the way to school. I would say/whine/cry, "I don't want to go to school, I don't want to go to school!" And my mom would reply each time in a sing-song voice, "But you have to go to school, because that is the rule" And I only went to Kindergarten a couple hours a day, just a few days a week. I did have some good teachers throughout the years. Teachers who were inspiring, and who kept me going, kept me from insanity. And I am very grateful for them. I don't know what my perfect solution would be. Education is important. And I think kids should go to school, as opposed to like, homeschooling, in most situations, for the social and real-life experience. But I hate the politics. I hate the way it can take over your life, even when you're not necessarily trying to be the best at everything. I don't like the useless and busy work. I don't like how some teaching procedures work, how, especially in math, kids have to do things a certain way. Sometimes we'd have to show our work, show how we figured it out, but we had to do it a certain way. Husband says I need to stop saying that I hate school, and I know I do. My daughter doesn't need to hear that. She's already genetically predisposed to dislike school; hearing it from mom all the time isn't going to help. I've got to figure out some way to cope. All I can say is, I really hope she likes it more than I did. Because, if ever she comes up to me and says she really doesn't want to go to school that day, especially if that statement involves tears, I'm gonna have a realllly hard time encouraging her to go, and not saying every time, "Oh, it's ok, sweetheart, you can stay home with Mommy today!"