Well, I made it through the day. But by the time Adam arrived home I could barely talk to him.

That night as we lay in bed, I told him why.

I was disappointed. With myself. I spent the entire day keeping the kids clean and fed. I broke up their fights. I reprimanded bad behavior. I cleaned up toys, I nagged them to clean up more toys. It was a job any babysitter could have done.

I felt bad that I couldn’t take them out some where to have a new experience. That I couldn’t get on the ground and play with all of them, or any of them for that matter. I couldn’t get them to behave better using positive reinforcement because I didn’t have time to step back and find things to positively reinforce.

All I could do was the bare minimum. And the bare minimum kept me on my feet all day long, running from problem to problem. I felt stretched as thin as I could go.

So what do you do when you feel like a bad mom?

For me it’s like any other bad habit. If you fall off the wagon don’t beat yourself up.  Just get up, dust yourself off and get back on.

Today the older boys went to school. I let the laundry sit in the dryer in the morning and tickled tortured the babies instead. In the evening I sat and joked with Ben while he bathed instead of cleaning up the dishes in the kitchen. And I let Jack fix the printer ink, something he had been asking me to do but I know I could have done faster and with less anxiety. I also sat with him and discussed monster trucks, letting him make a bracelet of them on my arm instead of cleaning the toys in the basement.

And, in case I wasn’t sure I was doing a good job, I found a show called, ‘Extreme Moms’ and got a good dose of people with mom’s so inadequate they made a reality show about it.