Who is SHE?

Sunday morning I found myself being exactly the kind if Mum I never EVER want to be.

It seems that in the last three months I have developed PMTNCS - Pre-menstrual Total Nutcase Syndrome.

My anxiety levels soar beyond the unfriendly knot I carry in my stomach most days; my general fearfulness and depression deepens. I feel like I'm drowning and am overwhelmed by, well by absolutely everything.

I cope and I put one foot in front of the other. I fix a smile on my face and keep repeating in the style of an old steam train 'I know I can, I'm sure I can'.

Meanwhile I pluck up courage and cry down the phone to my Mum, because I just can't cope with feeling that way; because I feel like I am going completely and utterly insane.

Anyway, back to Sunday. Isobel was riding her trike; Isobel was wearing her blue shoes as she didn't want to wear her Converse; Isobel was refusing to put her feet on the pedals, choosing instead to drag her toes across the ground.

I could hear myself 'Pick your feet up Isobel, good girl.'

Nothing wrong there. But try hearing it over and OVER again in the space in a very short journey.

Isobel, funnily enough had enough, and I had enough, not of her but of me.

It wasn't so much the nagging, but being an ineffective nagging parent. You know the type, the type where the parent's ineffective nagging is far more annoying than the child's behaviour.

Anyway, at this point I dispatched PD and Isobel to the park while I went and wept into a cup of coffee.