I remember the moment very clearly.\u00a0 It was a Monday and the girls and I were at our weekly playgroup at a friend\u2019s house.\u00a0 Sugarplum was only a few months old and she must have had a bad night.\u00a0 It was far enough from home that we had to take the bus (which by that point was not a big deal for us).\u00a0 I\u2019m sure it was typical fall morning in Dublin: rainy, cold and generally miserable.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure Honeybun, then 2, had given me a rough time getting ready as our mornings were always rushed when we had to catch the bus.\u00a0 After making our journey and stripping off all our layers of necessary warmth, I sat down with Sugarplum in my arms and a much needed coffee in my hand and began a story \u201cLast night, this thing\u2026\u201d smirking and nodding my head towards Sugarplum.\u00a0 The exact details of the morning may be a bit fuzzy but the shocked looks on the other mommy\u2019s faces stick with me.\u00a0 The horror!\u00a0 Did really she just call her baby \u201cthis thing?\u201d<\/p>\n
I was shocked too, by the reactions I got to words that I used often when talking with my hubby and family.\u00a0 I later processed the event and realized that I referred to my children as \u201cthings\u201d not as a lack of love or disgust as many people may assume but it\u2019s actually for the opposite reason, as a way of protecting the relationship I have with my children.\u00a0 During my first year working in childcare I was taught that there is no such thing as a bad child, only children with bad behaviors or who use poor judgment.\u00a0 Parents spend a lot of time redirecting our children\u2019s behaviors and attention and this is just my way of redirecting my own feelings.\u00a0 It helps me to take my negative thoughts and frustrations with their unintentional behaviors and separate them from my child.\u00a0 \u00a0It allows me to vent about the things they do without damaging my view of them as my beautiful, wonderful girls.\u00a0 It even seems to help me file my memories without combining the bad behavior with the child, hence why I can\u2019t even remember what had upset that morning in the first place!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a phrase that we have also always used lovingly.\u00a0 My hubby chases one of the girls around the room and upon catching them exclaims \u201clook at this thing I caught!\u201d\u00a0 I use it when talking about something silly they did while tickling them and using a silly voice.\u00a0 It\u2019s become a phrase we use less as our children grow and become more accountable for their actions but I\u2019m sure it will resurface when amazing baby #3 won\u2019t sleep or insists on nursing every hour, on the hour, around the clock or when s\/he spits up down my back just before we need to leave the house.\u00a0 While the behaviors are irritating, how can you be mad at a child for that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I remember the moment very clearly.\u00a0 It was a Monday and the girls and I were at our weekly playgroup at a friend\u2019s house.\u00a0 Sugarplum was only a few months old and she must have had a bad night.\u00a0 It was far enough from home that we had to take the bus (which by that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-mommys-life","category-baby-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2551,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions\/2551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}