At a particularly difficult and stressful time in my life, I pretty much whined at my husband constantly. I don’t remember exactly how he phrased it, but he finally offered up some words of wisdom. He said, “Suck it up, Cupcake.”I did not immediately take his words to heart.
However, I did quit whining at him; in fact I’m pretty sure I quit speaking to him altogether for a while.
Now that we’re older and, hopefully, wiser, we can see each other’s point of view. He says he’s sorry for not being more supportive back then. I realize that it wouldn’t have mattered how supportive he was. My problem was with me, not him.
Before the kids were born, I figured I knew it all; having kids would be a piece of cake. I did a lot of babysitting as a kid, how hard could it be? Turns out it can be really, really, really hard. It didn’t matter that friends with kids told me how tough it was. They obviously were doing something wrong if it was that difficult and stressful to raise their kids.
My kids would never act like that.
My babies would sleep through the night, and never scream.
We would breeze through potty training, and I would have the perfect family.
Well it turns out babies don’t sleep through the night, they do scream, potty training is miserable, and no one even told me about projectile vomit!
Don’t tell him I said so, but I think my husband may have been right. As much as I want to pitch a toddler sized tantrum on the days when things don’t go my way, it never ends well when I do. Of course sometimes it doesn’t end well when I suck it up either, but I figure I can always yell later when no one is around to copy my bad attitude. Or to teach everyone in preschool some new words they learned from mommy.
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