making dinner, i wanted to be thinking about how being a mother has radicalized me, how all the things i believe in have evolved thanks to having children. instead, as i was flipping through joy of cooking looking for the definition and precise measurements for how one might julienne something, my eldest child started throwing the wooden toppings for the wooden pizza up in the air, barely missing the sauce i'd prepared, and i found myself shouting, forcing his hand to pick the toppings up, not successfully explaining why exactly wooden toppings turned misguided missiles and subsequent giant mess was a bad idea, or at least unacceptable and then i thought, "well how radical is that?" it astounds me how often as i am sitting in my own thoughts on attachment parenting and how best to do it, i find myself stressed to the point of ignoring its primary tenets. but i absolve myself of feeling guilty. the thoughts on parenting increasing my radical tendencies inhabited only a very small portion of my day as my husband is sick and not getting out of bed and my children are insisting on messes and we were out of diaper covers and it is raining and chilly again. so clearly the stressors were unusually increased. barring extraordinary circumstances, sometimes, admittedly, i yell. i am not proud of the fact and i do not accept it as inherent to my method of childrearing, but i do realize that i am human and it is necessary for my children to understand that i have flaws so they can accept their own imperfection when they are older and overanalyze crap like this, surely in therapy, complaining about their mother.