How quickly I fall

Quick recap of Sunday night. Noah puked EVERYWHERE in his room. I have never cleaned up so much puke in my life. I spent a good 3 hours cleaning him and his room. This all after a day of listening to him tell me how mean I am. Apparently when he does something bad and gets in trouble it's MY fault when he gets grounded. Why wouldn't it be? His biggest problem is simply not listening. I tell him to do something and he doesn't do it or half does it. I tell him he has 10 minutes before he needs to brush his teeth for bed and 20 minutes later he's trying to negotiate staying up longer. I MAKE THE RULES! YOU FOLLOW THEM! It really isn't that hard.

After restoring his room to it's previous non smelly state and telling him goodnight again he tells me how much he loves me. He tells me thank you for taking care of him. I let him stay home from school just to be sure he was over his yuckiness. All day he was very kind and helpful...until.  UNTIL I told him he had played the computer enough for the day. You would have thought I'd told him to remove all of his fingernails. Immediately I went from loved and cherished mommy to evil mean lady. How quickly I fell from that pedestal. Now I'm under it. I'm being squashed by it again.  Seriously?!? After all the crap I do!


It really wears on me. I'm so tired of him acting like this. He has rules. He knows the consequences if he doesn't follow them. I feel like I've written this same thing over and over again. I try talking calmly about his behavior. I yell, which I know is bad. I try everything I can think of and still I come out the bad guy. If he behaved he wouldn't be in trouble. Our rules aren't even that strict. I talk to my sister a lot about this. My nephew is the same age and we both have problems with the boys. I really hope this is just some defiant phase. When he's mad he says he'd like to go live somewhere else. Sometimes I'd like that too. Sometimes it's just too much. I'd never actually make him go anywhere. I love him too much. I just need him to stop. I need him to listen. I'm not asking to be up on the pedestal. I just don't want to be underneath it. I'd be happy to hang from the edge. Happy to just not have him tell me how awful I am.