Secret eating of the selfless parent.

This has been a crazy weekend. We decided to have a sleepover with a friend of ours, she has two girls, one is 3 the other is 5. We had a zoo full of little monsters running around. 5 to be exact. We were out numbered for sure. Chasing five kids around is exhausting, 5 potty breaks, five snacks, five breakfast, lunches dinners! Which brings me to my topic of secret eating.

 Ducking around the corner to eat that cookie that you don't want to have to divide into pieces. Kids are bottomless pits. Kids also have the tendency to want whatever someone else has. Now as a parent I sometimes want a little something snack to keep me going, and I don't want to share it. I share pretty much everything else, including my bathroom time,! I just want to pee and poop in peace! I find myself doing this a lot, one of our kiddos is the snack queen, shes always down for a snack. Every time I am eating something without fail one of our minis wants a piece. This got me thinking about how nothing in this house seems to be sacred anymore. Being a parent means putting your needs and wants on hold to make sure your kids have everything they need. So why do I find myself doing some mission impossible moves just to sneak a package of gummies? Because its easier then explaining to your tear stained faced toddler that this is your snack and they need to go away. I find myself being conflicted when I need to be selfish. After all, its pretty much drilled in our heads that mommies need to put our lives on the back burner for the lives we have created.

We as parents spend so much time being selfless. We want our kids to have a clean house to play in, food in their bellies and fun things to do to keep them occupied.We could spend all day doing dishes, sweeping, mopping, diffusing fights, making lunches, making snacks, and then looking at the clock and realizing that its 3 in the afternoon and all that we have ingested is coffee and all the words we have swallowed instead of telling them how we really feel. So we open up a snack to fuel us so we can keep up with all the bullshit and thats when the children decided they are starving, even though they have eaten and eaten all fucking day. We say no, this is our snack we haven't eaten all day long. Then come the tears and the tantrum. I have learned that children are incredibly selfish. They are the center of their own universe and our lives revolve around them. I have also learned that parents are incredibly selfless and accept what are children think to be true, for the most part. We run around like crazy people catering to their needs and trying to teach them shit along the way. We spend a lot of time neglecting ourselves. So when we finally do take the time for ourselves we want to own it, and we don't want to share it. We find ourselves sneaking behind walls and hiding behind doors because otherwise we find ourselves guilted into giving up our snacks because the dramatics of their sobs  and declarations of being starving. We are trying to do our best to not raise a bunch of I want whine asses, but sometimes, we have our concerns. Such is the life of a parent, I guess I'll stick to cherishing the short moments of quiet that I do have for now, and worry about the rest later.