Before I had a kid, I was an idiot.

Before I had a kid, I was an idiot.

I wasn't stupid. After all, I got a decent score on my ACTs. I graduated with an acceptable GPA from my high school and college. I graduated from grad school with a 4.0. I have fun impressing people with my Jeopardy! knowledge. I'm a smart girl.

But I was an idiot.

That's the only way I can figure how I would think I had any reasonable idea as to what to expect when I had my own living, breathing human being to take care of day in and day out. "I'm not going to do that." "My kid won't do that." "My baby will be doing this."  Blah, blah, blah, fishcakes.

I wrote recently about how I don't feel like I will ever really have the parenting thing down. I get one thing together, and something else inevitably falls apart.

But these days, I feel like every. single. thing. I am doing is screwed up in some way...and it is my fault.

See, I thought that in order to be a "good mom", I had to do it all. Well, maybe not do it all, but try to do it all right.  Keep the house clean, keep the kid clean, breastfeed exclusively, get her on a schedule, make sure she sleeps in her own bed, don't worry about giving her solid foods until she's 6 months, get dinner on the table every night, yadda, yadda, yadda. Every single thing I was doing I was doing it as well as I could, but also simultaneously feeling like I was doing it wrong.

We have 2 dogs, and one saying that we tried to maintain throughout the puppy years was, "If you don't want the dog doing _____ when they're 150 pounds, don't let them do it when they're 15 pounds."  So, Waldo and Gus don't get on the couch. They get in and out of the car and the bathtub without help. They sit when they come in the house if it's raining, so that I can wipe off their paws.

I feel like with Avonlea, I've screwed up so much, and I've made things so hard on myself. She's a figurative 150lb dog that I didn't train right when she was 15lbs.

I worked so hard on breastfeeding that now, she will only eat from me. She spits out anything with texture, so she doesn't get any nutrients from "real food", and I am wasting tons of money on baby food that she eats one or two bites from. I also feed her before putting her down for a nap, or down for bed at night, so now she will scream if she doesn't get fed before bed.  Know who that messes up? Definitely not the little munchkin happily fed and sleeping in her bed.

I was lazy in the beginning, and once I found out she wasn't going to take a bottle anymore, I didn't press the issue. I didn't work with her to take a bottle. So now she doesn't take one. She does do a sippy cup and a cup with a straw, but I have never tried feeding her with that before putting her to bed. I never tried to have Nick feed her before putting her to bed. So now I am the one who has to put her to bed every night.

Avonlea still only sleeps in 2-3 hour stretches at night. I know I should sleep train her. I do. I have all of this guilt that she's keeping Nick up and he has to work and I get mad because I just want to stinking sleep already, but my boobs hurt if she goes really long between feedings because she eats every 2 hours at night that I just get up and feed her and she goes right back to sleep. And if I don't feed her then she screams for 1.5 hours, or maybe more but I don't know because by that time I lose my mind and just get up and feed her. So now I have a 10.5 month old who gets up at least 3 times every night and so I can't go do anything past 10pm because my kid will wake up and want to eat. Nick and I have tickets to see my favorite musical group on Sunday, and it's going to be a train wreck (pretty sure I can't convince them to only have the concert between 7 and 10pm).

My baby is a sweet, adorable, snuggly pair of handcuffs, and it is all my fault.

I'm already saying, "Oh, I'm going to do things so differently with the next kid," and then I stop myself and think, "Next kid? Oh, #*#& no!"