Wintertime and the Mama is Crazy

Every year about this time I think I am going crazy.  Then I remember:  It’s February– time for my mid-winter breakdown. Days are short, dreary nights are long.  The holiday glow has worn off like last summer’s tan, but it is still too early to order seeds from Burpees.  Complaining, sour attitudes, and snippy tones abound.  And the kids are being rotten, too.

Stuck in the house the majority of the time, the kids become grouchy with each other and the little ones fuss the day away.  I put on Barbie Rapunzel for the third time and am so depressed by my mousy, static-laden hair and alligator skin that I find myself foraging around for the leftover Christmas candy even though I hate chocolate.

In my sixteen years of parenting there have been more joys than I could have possibly imagined.  But there have also been some long, dark days:  The week my husband was gone on military training and my toddler and baby got hoof and mouth disease where the insides of their mouths were covered in sores that no medicine could soothe.  The time the baby burned her finger and slept no longer than ten minutes at a stretch all night long.  Breast infections, teething, croup, stomach bugs.  For some reason, when these things occur during the summer, it is not so bad.  But, during the winter, it is enough make a mom run in one direction for miles, stopping only to eat Hostess cherry pies at random gas stations.

Short of dropping off a few ‘items’ at the orphanage, there is no easy answer.  But now that my kids are older I have one distinct advantage over when they were small:  I know there is an end to it.  No matter how many colds they get, no matter how many teeth they are cutting all at once, no matter how much they bicker, it will end.  I used to feel that the squabble settling and the Desitin smearing would go on until I was in The Home.  I thought I would be more wrinkled than a month old potato and still reminding the kids to put paper on the toilet seat.

But then, one day I realized that the kids dress, bathe, and potty–all by themselves. They cook.  They clean.  They mow the yard.  It’s a mystery how it happened, but don’t underestimate the power of growing up.

So, on these cold, long winter nights, when depression and discouragement crouch at the door and, like the unmatched sock box, threaten to undo you, take heart:  Your children will become self-sufficient.  They will learn to get their own drinks of water.  They will learn how to make their own peanut butter sandwiches. They will.

So, remember two things: Spring is only thirty-one days away and, despite what your cotton-filled winter brain may tell you, this (mess, illness, noise level, attitude, household disaster, pile of ironing, filthy high chair tray) will pass.  And–after a couple decades–you may even miss it.