Mama's in Charge. Get Used to It.

After the meltdown of all meltdowns Saturday afternoon I decided to become hard core in this madness we call mothering.
The meltdown came across as even more end-of-the-world-ish because I had just come from a four hour parenting conference. As I was screaming for Ethan to get his little putootee into the house I happened to glance down at the book I had just purchased at the conference: The Well Behaved Child: Discipline that Really Works! And then the small caption: A Well-Behaved Child? Yes, it's possible!
And in my head, Alanis Moresette singing:
And isn't it ironic...a little too ironic...
Ethan spent the day with Grandma (God bless her but the kids come home ruined. Absolutely ruined) and then after no nap we went to a birthday party at Deana's for Simon and my mom.
Let's just say Andrew and Ethan can bring out the devil inside of each other.
Ethan, like I mentioned earlier, had a meltdown that was capable of starting world war three. I left right in the middle of dinner. It was that bad.
I guess in all of it I learned Ethan doesn't give a big stinky poo about what I say. In other words: HE CONTROLS ME.
Or at least he did, and to some degree still does. But the light bulb that has gone on in my head is this: This is MY life. Not Ethan's. He can have his own life when he is twenty six.
Mama's in charge now. Not little Lear Number One.
This means me being a little mean, a little hard ass. It means saying "No", "Mama's got work to do", "Because I said so", and then some more "NO's" just so he gets the point little man does not rule the roost. My life does not revolve around him. He's a part of it, and I love him crazy, but he is not me.
He's little, I am big. And let's be honest, I don't like playing trains. I'll paint a little bit, I will play a board game, I'll take you bike riding. But I am not five, I am not a boy, and I won't play make believe trains. Oh and? I don't feel guilty about it.
In other news I am having an almost-twenty-seven-year-old-life crisis. I think. Or it might just be that I regret taking my piercings out and I still would like a tattoo. And I really want to go tanning. I haven't tanned since I was like fifteen but I just really want to go.