One of THOSE days

Note: This post was originally published on Mormon Mommy Wars back in January, but it's just too good not to have in our own archives. So if it's a repeat for you, enjoy again!

First, let me introduce myself. I’m a mom of one incredibly active and very very strong-willed 2 year old son, Max, and we (Max, myself, and hubby) have just moved from a small apartment in NYC to a rather large and old house in the country. One thing to note is that our house, being very old, has what are called “registers” in the floor on the upstairs – these are basically holes in the floor with iron grates in them, which allows the heat to come up from the downstairs. On the downstairs side, there is an additional vent cover.

Max and I have had a challenging last week or so (dad away on a business trip, Max waking up for the day at 4:30 am, etc.) and I'm very very tired and have had a bit too much of him. Which still doesn't totally excuse this, but whatever...

The latest thing that is driving me nuts is that he is once again refusing to nap, which results in a complete mess of a child from when I finally give up on the nap until bedtime. The other afternoon, I was stretching him as long as possible (hoping that would result in a nap, but having a pretty good feeling that it wouldn’t) and I was doing that tired mommy "I'll just lie here on the couch and close my eyes while you play with that puzzle" when I was rudely awakened by Max coloring on my face with a marker. Luckily it was a washable one, but I was NOT happy. So I decided it was bedtime. I put him to bed, knowing full well that it wasn't going to work, and then headed back to the couch, threw a pillow over my head, and promptly fell asleep for 45 minutes.

So I wake up and Max is yelling, and I know he hasn't gone to sleep. He starts to yell louder and harder, and I figure I'll get up and go check on him, that he probably has a dirty diaper. I step from my tv room into my kitchen, at which point I see Max hanging through the ceiling from the armpits down He had removed the register from his floor, kicked out the vent cover in the kitchen ceiling, and had then decided to climb through it, resulting in him being suspended over my kitchen table, screaming his lungs out. I was momentarily lost over what to do, but then decided it was better to stay below him than to take the time to run upstairs and pull him back up through the floor (I didn't know how long he'd been there and how long he'd last). So I grabbed his feet and talked him into dropping through the hole, at which point I caught him.

Ohhhhh I'm such a horrible mother.

And yes, he did have a dirty diaper. And yes, the floor vents are now screwed AND nailed into the floor. And yes, I don't think he'll live to see 3.