Have A Little Patience

 In the words of Take That (drool) 'Have a Little Patience' is just not something I find easy, even if preached by men who look like Greek Gods. I have never been a patient person at all, in fact quite impatient. Ok, OK, very impatient. My dad always tells me that I'm so impatient I'm like a 'tick on a cows backside' when I want something...(he's Irish) and I think he means that as a compliment to my high levels of impatience?!

I've spent years trying to perfect techniques for keeping my cool, for posing as the most patient and care free person when things aren't quite happening...quick...enough. Yet everything fails, I think it's just part of my DNA. In amoungst my blue eyes dna, dark hair dna, is a little thing that registers as being 'highly impatient'. I think I'm doomed to be impatient forever as it literally is so deeply ingrained in me.

Everyone said it would change when I became a mum. They said you have no choice but to be patient as a mummy. It changed. Slightly. You don't have much choice when you're a mummy but to take many deep breaths and take charge of the situation and rely on your patience to get you through. It's either that or the red faced, screaming, tantruming toddler will win and get the better of you, and lets face it that's never going to happen (particularly with me because one of my other more negative traits is stubborness!). I remember once when I had not had any sleep at all and it was three am and my newborn son was still crying. The bottle next to my bed was propelled through the air with as much speed as I could muster, splattering milk down the opposite wall-see, not very patient! This was the only time this happened and no child was harmed in the release of my impatience! I've tried harder since then!

So it's been a really testing time the last few months as Joshua has been going through the 18 month sleep regression. I wrote about this a while ago and for the most part it's a very minor change for us all. We can go for a week with nothing but normal 12 hours sleep at night time. But then everytime I get drawn in to a false sense of security about it, he will spend a night or two barely sleeping. Like last night. At four o'clock this morning I was rocking my 19 month old son in the pitch black and singing the good old Take That lyrics in my head. This began to make me loose patience because after 45 minutes of singing only the chorus (because I don't know the rest) I now had a dead arm courtesy of Joshua and what was now the most annoying, patronising song in the world, spinning round my head. Cheers for that Gary and co!

I do realise I've come a long way with my patience, I can sometimes even play the part of a cool as cucumber mummy when my son is having a hissy fit in the middle of Sainsburys because I won't let him eat his farleys biscuits there and then. Bribing him with holding the shampoo only lasts so long now he's smart enough to realise there is nothing good to come from holding it. Remind me again why I want me son to intellectually develop further?! But that said there are still times, many times actually when I'm not patient. When I feel like screaming (not neccessarily at him!) because the deep rooted impatience is fighting to rear it's ugly head! I have realised that Mummy patience is totally different to normal pre-parenting patience. It's a new breed, it's called for more, and needs to be provided in a more pure and powerful form. A bit like that super unleaded you can get as opposed to the normal stuff.

So in my curiosity I just had a look for the deffintion of patience and realised I'm never, ever going to be able to call myself patient..."the quality of being patient,  as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like"

I'm a lost cause then!

 ...Yup. I'm basically, like, screwed then on the patience front! 

Oh well.

Love Chloe xx