A Day In The Life of Mom

Life with any child can be difficult, throw in ADHD, ODD and OCD then your life suddenly becomes a roller coaster ride going at top speed with no seatbelt. You are going to get thrown in every direction imaginable and deal with things you never though possible. Throughout this roller coaster ride you will find yourself saying things you would have never dreamed possible like, “please don’t eat money…. no, more will not come out” and “we don’t pee on the floor just because puppy does doesn’t mean it’s OK for you to do”. Sometimes you have to ask yourself if what you are experiencing is real because you feel like you are in a bad dream unable to wake from it. Then for some unknown reason you are suddenly given a day when nothing happens and everything seems perfect. You don’t have to get off the toilet early to break up a fight or search a bedroom for the missing hairspray. These days you don’t spend countless hours handing out reminders or searching for a shoe that was just at the door. These “perfect” days you spend anxiously waiting for something to happen, then when nothing does happen you spend your night restlessly going over the day trying to find that one thing that did go wrong that you missed. You go over everything, check on things you know you don’t have to and spend the rest of your night focusing on the ceiling, why? Because your mind and body just can not seem to comprehend what happened during the day, you are too used to having to run around all day. The next day, if you slept at all, you wake to the sound of something breaking or to someone yelling, as you sleepily look at the clock you realize it’s only 6am. Right then and there you envy yourself from the day before and swear the next good day you have you will not waste it. You drag yourself from bed and clean up whatever broke or break up the fight in an attempt to make coffee and get your kids breakfast. Its then that you learn, your darling child woke up minutes after you fell asleep and fixed their own breakfast, milk, cereal and sugar. You find this out of course because there is no milk left, because you little one poured a bowl of cereal, forgot about the milk then poured it down the drain because warm milk is icky. What is left of the sugar is now on the floor because your darling child tried filling the sugar bowl but was interrupted and frightened by the cat, which of course caused the sugar to all fall to the floor. After cleaning up the sugar you decide, like it or not, you have to get to the store to replace what needs replacing, so you round up the kids. Spend an hour finding shoes, then clothes, then shoes again then you struggle to get the kids out the door in one direction. You try to make this necessary trip as quick as possible, longing for that cup of coffee you desperately need but by the time you get home and start to pour your coffee you realize the coffee is cold and the kids are wanting lunch. Looking at the clock you are dumbfounded to see it is already after noon and as you leave the cold coffee to make lunch you wonder where the time went. Your day continues as usual, cleaning spills, breaking up fights, searching for lost items and reminding your ADHD child why jumping off the roof is not a good idea. By the time night hits, the family is full, the house is a disaster and all you want is for the kids to stay quietly in their own rooms but your day isn’t over just yet. You spend your evening cleaning up the mess and sending your child back to their room. Finally you get a chance to watch a t.v show of your choosing, struggling to keep your eyes open long enough to watch. As you doze off from sheer exhaustion you are awakened by the sound of your ADHD child out of their room again, you open your mouth to tell them to go to bed when they hug you, hand you a home made envelope, give you a kiss, say good night and run off to bed. It is at the very moment, upon opening the envelope that you remember not only why you love your kids no matter the chaos they cause, but also how sweet and innocent they really are. You remember why you run yourself ragged daily for them and you realize that without your children, life wouldn’t be worth living. Inside that envelope is something special, made just for you. You have had notes that say “I love you” a hundred times before but this one is special. Maybe it’s the effort put into coloring a misshaped butterfly, or the amount of hearts or maybe it’s the cute curls put onto every letter, it doesn’t matter because this is not just a note, it is love. You proudly display it on the refrigerator and as you turn out the light you take one last look at the love that is spilling out of every corner of the house and you can’t help but think that no matter how painful and stressful life is, you would, without question, go to the end of the earth and back again for your kids. You go to bed well after you should have with a smile on your face and you tell yourself that tomorrow will be a good day. You just manage to fall asleep when you are woken up by the crash of something falling to the floor and you cringe at the thought of not getting sleep as you pry yourself from bed. You walk out of your room, quickly glancing at the clock to see the time when you stop dead in your tracks, you rub your eyes and look again in disbelief, hoping that you read the time wrong but you didn’t. You have been asleep for hours not seconds and a new day has started weather you are ready for it or not. You are snapped back to reality by the voice of your child outside your door, asking if you can take them to the park. This is your life, frustration, exhaustion and stress built on a foundation of innocence and love. You know deep down that you wouldn’t trade it for anything, although you swear to yourself, the next calm day you get will be spent relaxing but we all know the truth, that day will be spent like all the others, wondering what you missed.