It's not all rainbows and unicorns
This is the first article of Vulnerable Wednesdays, a series I hope to continue for many Wednesdays to come.
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
It’s 8am on Sunday.
“Daddy, wake up! What happened to the onions you cut yesterday?”
“Huh? What?”
“Mama said there were no onions already cut for the frittata, but you cut some onions yesterday.”
“Oh, I cut those for the black bean soup. I didn’t cut onions for the frittata.”
I tried to go back to sleep and was nearly there, and then awoke again, because I heard my wife having a stern conversation with my 4-year old. She was “playing” with our 1-year old and it wasn’t going well.
I’m awake. Ugh.
It had been a rough night. Both kids woke up several times, and getting back to sleep was hard. I wasn’t feeling great and was irritable.
For context, my wife and I divide and conquer when possible. I take the night shifts, which means any wake up from 9pm - 5am and then there’s a hand off in the morning. That’s why I was sleeping while she was cooking.
A few other things didn’t go as expected, and I snapped my daughter several times that morning resulting in some tears.
I was frustrated that she woke me up. I was frustrated that she rough-housed with our son, which woke me up again. I was frustrated that she asked for a frittata even though we were also making waffles—scrambled eggs would have been much faster, and would have likely led to fewer issues.
I’m not proud of the parent I was that morning.
Reflecting, my daughter’s actions were reasonable.
She saw me cut onions yesterday
She saw me cut up all the other vegetables for a frittata, not knowing that I was thinking of using them on Monday morning instead.
She heard my wife say there were no onions for frittata
She woke me up to ask about the onions I cut
She enjoys playing with her baby brother and doesn’t always know where to draw the line. And my wife’s reaction was completely reasonable.
I was unreasonable with my reactions though.
Parenting is hard. Patience is hard. Practice, practice, practice.
By the way, that frittata recipe is killer and great way to get both our children to eat eggs and veggies—I’ll share that another time.