So when I decided that the day after a cocktail party (followed by some late night/early morning margaritas) I should probably lay off the vino, it seemed like a smart, healthy and easily executable plan. But then a day like today happens.
It starts off innocently enough - the child wakes, but I'm prepared. My head might be a little tight due to the aforementioned libations, but this is nothing I couldn't have expected. Time to pour that comforting cup of tea and settle in for the Animal Show. A surprise blessing occurs - our nanny, who watched SB while we went out, has stayed over and offers to take take her off my hands so I can get some sleep. Tight head wins out over pride. Besides, my kid seems FAR more interested in hanging out with her than with me. I gratefully accept and slink off to bed. My Pollyannaish streak tells me I've got this day by the horns.
The morning passes with little to report. Breakfast goes swimmingly. The tantrum upon leaving the playground is more contained than usual. At lunch, I manage to not only shovel in chicken while SB is distracted by sorting through the videos on my iPhone, but follow it up with a plate of broccoli. I continue sipping water, confident that the most challenging part of the day is nearly over.
The tide begins to turn shortly after SB is put down for her nap. After completing the ever-expanding ritual of "last hug and kiss" - a somewhat ambiguous affair, given that there are approximately 5 requests for "last" hugs - I manage to make my escape and throw some food on my plate. The calls for "mommy" are our first indicator that we may not be out of the woods quite yet. "There's no need to panic," I tell myself, willing positive thoughts. "She's done this before. Another hug, and we're off to the Land of Nod."
But the Land of Nod eludes us, as does the Land of Passing Out From the Exhaustion of Weeping for a Solid 30 Minutes. Eventually we wave the white flag and get my sticky, weepy, blotchy child up. Let the afternoon festivities begin.
Play dough. Park. Even leaving the park to go home for dinner. It's all manageable enough, and I can still hold out hope that this day will pass - sooner or later. The fabric of the lie I'd created to console myself begins to unravel as soon as we get home. The Witching Hour is upon us, and my overtired, overstimulated, over-opinionated toddler begins to melt. Changing her diaper has me lunging across furniture, trying to contain her as she flees. Washing hands for dinner begins as a test of patience as SB runs laps around me, going anywhere but the bathroom, and ends in hand-to-hand combat as I forcibly dry her hands while trying to avoid being kicked in the face by a writhing creature that resembles my child in the throes of demonic possession.
"Do you want me to handle her?" asks Bree, as I storm out of the bathroom and plop down on the couch.
"If you want her to eat tonight," I respond tersely. "Because I'm done." I angrily suck down my hydrating water. It tastes just like...water, and has all the kick of H2O. Which is beginning to feel a bit lacking.
Dinner itself is a nightmare of screams and screeches in the ultrasonic range. Only far more audible. SB will neither sit down in her seat, nor allow us to lift her into it. By the time we finally wrestle and strap her down, the affair has become a hostage negotiation, with us playing the roles of both negotiators and hostages, and our kid portraying the radical with her finger on an atomic bomb. She-Blob wants bread and eggs for dinner? Why, of course. She has requested her giant panda (the one nearly the same size she is) to share the seat with her? I'll be happy to feed gobs of eggs to them both. She has decided that her panda is out of favor and would prefer the stuffed animals currently in her crib at the other side of the house? Bree trots off to retrieve. All we need to do is get through this and bath. At whatever cost. My visions of abstinence are fading, replaced by the realization that wine won't even begin to cover this.
The rest of the evening passes in a blur of acquiescing to every whim and request (why sure, the soaking wet ducky wash cloth can read books with us on our bed), punctuated by my mental countdown to the moment SB's head will hit the pillow and I will have peace and a largish drink.
And so here I am - a bit battered and bruised, but nursing a drink of rum and tropical juices. I don't even like rum. Or pineapple juice.
In the words Perry Farrell's Jane, "I'm gonna kick tomorrow." I am, after all, an optimist.
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