A post on slopes. And why they are so darn slippery.

As I posted before...or...well...I MEANT to post before, but now I can't even remember if I pushed 'Publish', and I lack the enthusiasm needed to go back and check...today I breathed a great sigh of relief as my kids finished the school year. We are DONE for this year. Just in time for my 17-year-old to start summer school on Wednesday. REALLY? What the? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I wanted a whole summer of NOT having to worry about homework, tests, and whether or not they are TURNED IN! I wanted a summer of NOT having to have my kid to school at 8 am every weekday. I wanted a summer of SLACKING! Yes, I, the MOM, wanted summer off. Because seriously? I am just SO VERY DONE this time. It has been and EXHAUSTING year. We've tried everything from hyper-vigilance to (attempting to) not pay attention and let our child take responsibility for herself and her grades. Stop laughing. Theoretically that was supposed to work. The 'I am not going to make sure anymore that you're doing it - YOU have to choose to succeed!' speech was made. There was enthusiasm. And we had our first year of a completely failed required class. And now, we get to pay for it with summer school. Because it's not just THE CHILD who goes to summer school. She is still not driving, so transportation has to be worked out - at 8 AM and at 11. The computer has to be reissued, which means on top of the insurance, we have to pay the fine she accrued on a laptop I literally JUST paid to have the screen replaced on. It means another 6 weeks of having to worry about whether she is taking it seriously or not. I want to throw a tantrum and stomp my feet. I want to scream 'I told you so!!!!' I want to just refuse. But I'm mom. So of course I am going to blog about it instead. I read a really interesting article on Huff Post tonight. It was followed swiftly by this post linked by one of my facebook friends. I read them, nodding my head, agreeing with what each of them feels. There are just DAYS...sometimes one on top of the other...when I am shaking my head and asking God - 'Really?' And then it occurs to me...He has put up with so much from me, and more. He has stood by me, every moment, when I had every willful thought and action my kids have pulled together. When I didn't do the work, or when I lied, or when I denied He even existed. He was there. Forgiving me. Loving me. Waiting for me to see Him and all He has done. I read these articles, and I understand - they are our way of coping. They are our way, as a society full of shared experiences through social media for us all to say - "I understand. I feel the same." We normalize it - because we all - at least any of us with more than one child - have had a moment of questioning the sanity of our decision to reproduce! (I have to say people with more than one child - because I will admit - with my first child? When I was one-on-one parenting? I never felt this way. I never had the days where I really did want a bottle of wine (yes, the whole bottle) at 3 in the afternoon. I didn't have days of just wanting to be AWAY. It didn't matter where. I didn't have those moments when going to the store - BY MYSELF - felt like a fabulous vacation I wished I could make last FOR HOURS - but which I eventually returned from just to keep my spouse from losing his cool and super gluing the children to their bedroom floors. I try to think back to when I was younger. Back then, we didn't have facebook. Moms didn't share their woes via facebook, twitter, and blogs. Their models were June Cleaver and Harriet Nelson. They did everything for their husbands and children without a hair out of place and with their pearl necklaces and heels. Oh how I wish I was capable of that. They didn't shut themselves in the bathroom for a moment of peace, or flee to Walmart for sanity in the form of a bar of chocolate. They were the ideal. Maybe in some sense it made moms who couldn't achieve that feel worse about themselves...but maybe it also gave them an ideal to reach for to try and do better. I am sitting here tonight, having read those two articles, and countless statuses from other frazzled moms today, and wondering...if our baseline has changed - to this frazzled, hanging on by our fingernails, not-quite-focusing-on-those-really-good-moments types of parenting. Dooce, one of the most famous mommy bloggers out there, has made her parenting frustrations one of her most common topics. And we can all relate, right? But what if this is the slow regression of excellence as parents? It's odd, because at the same time we have this surge in 'attachment parenting' - helicopter moms and dads who believe in baby-wearing, family co-sleeping, never teaching a baby to self-soothe or 'cry it out'. I just have a fear that, in our need to feel accepted...normal...sharing experiences...that we're lowering the bar on our expectations. What if next year, I reach this year's level of exasperation with schoolwork a month earlier? What if, because we get to go through summer school this year, I just can't drum up the enthusiasm at all? I can find plenty of support online for why it's ok - why I am justified - why in the end it really doesn't matter? I love my kids - I really do. I have good hearty chuckles reading many of these blogs (Jen Hatmaker especially) who are TOTALLY writing my life. But I DO want to aspire to a June Cleaver kind of life. I DO want to have the pearls and the heels and the hair and the home that's always a place of peace and calm when my husband comes home. And yet I relate a little more to Peg Bundy. I just don't want to lose the ideal. I don't excellence to mean the kids were fed tv dinners and were still alive at the end of the day. Am I alone in wanting more?