Yesterday we went to Matt Blatt at Leichardt. I woke up and needed to buy a galvanised yellow bar stool. Life is funny like that hey! So off we went and walked around oohing and ahhing at all the cool shit that that place churns out.
Breaking my karma of retail wonderment was a small child, a boy of about 2, who was channelling his pent up rage and anger very vocally. Didn't he know how much fun it was to spend a Saturday morning at a furniture warehouse? Anyway, he was fully pissed off and chucking a tantrum high up in the Richter scale. Complete with screaming and throwing himself onto the floor and thrashing and gnarling and crying. It was quite the sight and took me straight back to the time (many times let's be honest) that I was that mum, pleading for the insanity to stop.
The boy's dad was doing his best to calm him down while the Mum struggled at the check out with a wriggly toddler, a sweet faced girl who had stitches in her forehead.
There is nothing like a baby and a toddler to remind you that you are alive.
I stood next to her and smiled. Here eyes were almost full of tears and she looked back at me and apologised. I told her it was nothing I had not seen before and she did not need to apologise.
"If they really told you what it was really like I would have thought twice about having kids" she said to me. I nodded.
"Shit yeah!" I proclaimed. "You are in the most difficult stage right now but it does get easier..."
She looked over to the Woogettes who were sitting in one of those fancy spherical chairs under a sign proclaiming DO NOT SIT IN THIS CHAIR. They were gently fighting over my iPhone.
"When does it get easier?" The lady asked me. I told her I would let her know.
Later that night The Woogettes brang their own home brand of terror to the surface and were completely horrific. I am not going to relive it now but I think a good dose of over-tiredness and the rain and the memory of spending a Saturday morning at the Matt Blatt showroom culminated in the perfect storm. My motherhood ass got good and royally kicked into next week.
So I just want to say, in the very slim chance that that lady from Matt Blatt with the two small kids EVER reads this post, I have changed my mind. It does not get easier. It just gets different.
What has been your most difficult parenting stage?
