Isn’t Love Grand…errrr….Funny…um….Complicated?

Posted February 13, 2014 20 Comments by Amber Perea

I have learned over the past few years a lot about the intricacies of love. And even more about family. One of the main things that I have concluded in this research is, Amber’s Law of Love: You cannot truly believe that you love someone if, at least once a week, you don’t contemplate killing them and/or selling them on the black market.

You can’t. It’s just not possible. And if you actually can…I hate you. Please know that.

You can love someone with the passion of one thousand suns and that doesn’t make them stop acting like they may, in fact, hate you and may seriously be attempting to send you straight to the loony bin. Take my beautiful child, for instance. No seriously, please take him! Today he threw several fits. Too many to begin to count, even. Offhand, there was one for having the audacity to not have soup in the house (he doesn’t like it or eat it), one for making him take a bath (after a number two “accident” he neglected to mention to me for a bit), and because I wouldn’t let him eat the macaroni and cheese out of the box in the grocery store. Yes, the uncooked noodles and powdered cheese kind. That one.

Do I love him? Of course. Would I fist fight a live bear if it meant saving his life? Yes, a thousand times, yes. But is his mind-numbing whining causing me to lose my sanity at such a rapid rate that I am counting the days until our mini-vacation this month? Ab-so-freakin’-lutely. The answer is…ten very long days, by the way. 😉

It’s funny, when they are tiny babies you have all of these ideals of what kind of mother you will be and all of the opinions in the world about every other parent that you see. Because you are evolved. You have read all of the books and know all that there is to know about this parenting gig, right?

Lately, I have sunken down to threatening to throw his toys/food/ect. into the trash can when he misbehaves. I hate that I do it, it’s ridiculous and lazy, and almost just as childish as the tantrum that I am attempting to abate…but it works damnit! How is that for being an evolved parent? I yell. Just so he can hear me over the piercing screaming. A quick, “JAMESON!”, generally does the trick nicely and gets his attention long enough to threaten to throw something in the trash. I send him to time-out on trumped up charges because the whining is starting to make me lose my cool and I might yell for real. I feel like the worst mother on the planet and I want to go back to the days when I knew everything because I didn’t know…well, anything.

But then, just when I have think I cannot possibly take any freaking more, he snuggles up to me and I am putty in his tiny little hands again. We play Hulk and Spiderman and I am wrapped around his itty bitty little finger just like none of it ever happened. I completely forget that three times today alone I had to walk out of a room with my eye twitching, that I let him watch a nonage-appropriate cartoon just for thirty minutes of ever-loving peace to do the dishes….

And then, he starts that infernal screaming yet again and around and around we go. Because love is complicated like that. But, I suppose, I wouldn’t take it any other way. You would never take such pleasure in the tiny moments of bliss without a little bit of  terror, too.

Parenting kids love moms motherhood parenting parenting humor parents terrible threes toddlers

Amber Perea View All →

I’m just living minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day.