I’m having a hard time getting time to type lately. It’s not that I’ve stopped the roiling feelings… it’s that my arms are full. Even though this baby is my most put-down-able baby I use the times when she isn’t in my arms to sprint through work. I’m always behind.

The big kids and I are in an interesting phase. Kids are pushing back in important ways. They are individualizing and expressing preferences. Things like: I have been told that I am not allowed to discuss details of my kids transition with anyone who is not intimately in his life or an appropriate doctor or trans for the foreseeable future. That makes sense. This is going to be a process. (Middle Child is currently going by the pronoun he. I can say that much to clear up confusion and then I have to stop.)

My daughter keeps pushing back on my nagging and I get it. I’m completely fucking annoying. But she’s 10 and she still forgets to do a lot of stuff and when she forgets to do stuff she gets mad at me for not reminding her. So I kind of had a melt down a few days ago and I started sobbing because if I’m not allowed to tell you to do it without being bad and if I don’t tell you to do it I’m being bad… I am going to explode into the nastiest bitch ever because if all of my low key options make me bad I’m going to say fuck it all then I will be horrible and all of your fun goes away and I will nitpick every fucking thing in the universe.

I had a good half an hour of crying and talking about how YOU HAVE LEFT ME WITH NO WAY TO BEHAVE AND I CANNOT COPE WITH THIS.

Then we went to the dentist and found out we get to pay $750 to fix four cavities. There goes our summer fun!

So I’m having some big feelings. I’m not supposed to nag but I am to blame when things don’t happen. I am supposed to make entertaining magic appear even as money is sucked away into medical care. (I’m a petty fucker but a piece of me is just overjoyed that a medical expense isn’t all my fault.) I’m supposed to suggest the right classes at the right time or my kids feel free to complain bitterly about how I failed to meet their needs.

I’m looking at my spoiled brats and thinking a lot of harsh thoughts about my parenting, let me tell you.

At the end of my meltdown I told my daughter that until she can get more than half of her assigned stuff without reminders STOP TELLING ME THAT I SHOULDN’T NAG YOU. THIS IS LITERALLY MY JOB AND I HAVE TO DO IT AND I AM GOING TO GET FUCKING AWFUL IF YOU KEEP TELLING ME TO STOP REMINDING YOU. YOU DON’T REMEMBER WITHOUT REMINDERS SO STOP BEING NASTY TO ME ABOUT THIS.

Like… the baby was born and EC just stopped wearing her headgear for her braces. I wasn’t sitting on her to force her to put it on every night… so we all kind of realized she went months without wearing it. Whoops. So… we want to put our house on the market when her braces come off. But she can’t be bothered to do the basic care necessary to get the braces to fucking come off.

This kind of thing.

There’s more. But I don’t need a long rant about my daughter’s forgetfulness today. Shit happens.

I wonder more about her being on the autism spectrum even though it wasn’t identified at the first screening. I wasn’t diagnosed until 35 and I could talk about the lifelong trajectory of my development. I sorta fear it’ll be like that for her too. Her development is just… cock eyed.

I hear a baby.