Lousy parent

It's been a rough week here.  I spent Wednesday in some kind of frantic state... I can't even say what it was all about but I was seriously annoyed that I couldn't get good behavior out of Emily, and I was freaking mad.  Audrey was driving me nuts because she's decided not to be potty trained anymore.  Guess that was a fun little experiment, honey.  I've gone back to my forum, begging for help.  She totally had it all figured out, and now she's not making ANY effort at all to even tell me when she has to go, and she fights like hell if I tell her she must sit and try.  Then 20 minutes later she comes back to find me with wet or dirty pants.  I am so frustrated, and I'm probably doing everything wrong, but I just don't know how to get past this.  Hopefully OhCrap lady has some ideas.

I finally got some good sleep Thursday night after a late night (upset with myself for the way I parented Wed), and a long day at work and an evening out to celebrate a new product release with some coworkers.  Yesterday, I pretty much operated on the idea that whatever I would have done on Wednesday, I would do the opposite.  We went to the store to buy paint, and Emily worked on a project while Audrey took a fantastic 3-hour nap, which was preceeded by a poop on the potty.  It was all looking up.  Today, pee everywhere.  There never really was anything that wrong with Emily's behavior, in retrospect.  I hope I've turned a corner with that. 

So, I just heard that someone I knew from marching band had a 4-month-old who died of SIDS this week.  Horrifying!  I told Travis about it after lunch today.  Apparently Emily overheard that, even though I didn't say much more than I did in this paragraph, but she got to thinking about it.  This afternoon, she sat on my lap, and said she didn't like dying.  I said i didn't either.  She asked me if I was going to die, and i said not for a very, very long time (I can't lie to her!).  She then started crying really, really hard and said she didn't want to die because she would be all alone!!  Oh my gosh, I wasn't ready for this conversation yet!!  I told her I would always, always be with her because I love her more than anything in the world and she's not getting rid of me!  That seemed to relax her a bit.  It didn't seem like the right time to introduce any kind of religious teachings, since her fear was so very literal.  Instead, I talked to her about how Mommo used to be a little girl, and then she grew up and had a little girl, and that little girl grew up to be Grandma, and it took a long time to tell the story so I hoped that would show her just how long her life will be (hear that, Universe?  WILL be!).  And then she asked something about a birthday, and I said I have a lot of birthdays left, and that Emily has even more.  That seemed to satisfy her all right, and we snuggled and talked for probably an hour after that about just fun random stuff.  What a sweet girl.  and an unexpected way to spend the afternoon!

Trav and I took Emily down to the parking lot near our house to see if Emily could balance on her new bike.  No go.  Not even excited about it, just wanted to walk (or dance, really) most of the way back.  oh well.  She and Audrey spent a good amount of the afternoon outside playing and watching/helping Travis work on the landscaping out front.  Trav is exhausted tonight from the work, so we'll all sleep well tonight.  If I can get past my own conscience...