Thank god it's Friday. Thank God and Buddah and all the deities who ever were, are, or will be!! Yeah. It's been a tough week.

Today, though? Today was not half bad. It was even (dare I say it?) half good. Actually, it was just good. No half. But I was talking about my crappy week, so back to that.

You see, for some ungodly reason, the little child I nanny for decided to just change personalities. Someone must have accidentally flipped the "freak out" switch in some secret compartment in his body and we were all doomed. DOOMED!

All week long, it was Tantrum City. Everything was cause for a full fledged freak-out session, and damn if that's not the most stressful thing ever. I think it's hard to imagine if you've never been in that situation: you're the only one home with a 14 month old kid who is shrieking in the shrillest possible way because you just prevented him from flinging himself over the bannister, or from strangling himself in computer cords or because you (god forbid) tried to keep him from playing in the trash. It's insane. And let me tell you, you feel like the worst possible person in the world when you realize you're angry at a baby. What kind of person gets mad at a little baby for being frustrated??

Well, I do, for one.

In fact, yesterday, after three afternoons in a row of this chaos (and repeated thoughts of, "I can't handle this," and "This will never, ever end, will it?"), he slid himself halfway off his high chair because I was going to stop him from eating something he might choke on. He screamed and screamed like he was in pain while lying safely on the floor. I had had it. I walked into the next room, sat down on a chair, and cried.

I wish I could explain that feeling, that deep sense of hopelessness, and that ball of stress that just hurts sitting right there in the center of your chest. It was all too much, and that's why I cried, and that's why I kept crying even after Vic had calmed down and crawled over to look at me in the most confused way. Guilt surged through me, for being so frustrated and fed up, for feeling so angry and so wholly unsympathetic towards his outburts, for crying in front of him and confusing him, for wanting to give up, for being a bad person. Overly dramatic? Perhaps. But that's how I felt in that moment.

I cried again when I got home, because I ... I don't know. I think sometimes I get so stressed out that the only way to let it all go is to just cry it out, and I guess I wasn't done yet.

But after all the tears I shed yesterday and a good night's sleep, I felt rather refreshed today. I took a nice brisk walk from BART to Vic's house. Vic was in a good mood when I got there. He giggled at the way I flapped my shirt to cool myself, so I did it more, to make him laugh harder. Then I changed his diaper and his outfit and we set off to run some errands and play at the park. The weather was beautiful, especially in the shade, and we had a super fun afternoon.

Best of all, I had a long talk with Beth after she got home from work, and I finally told her all the feelings I'd been holding onto all week long. It was funny because she knew something was up with me, and I knew she knew, but I also knew that if I'd tried to talk about it earlier, I would have absolutely burst into tears, and I just wasn't in the mood to do that on her porch steps, I guess. I felt so much better after talking to her about my feelings and after hearing that it's perfectly normal to feel all of those things I thought were so horrible. What kind of person gets angry at babies? Nearly every kind of person. It's okay, it turns out. I'm not a total jerk after all. Who knew? Heh.

So yeah, everything's cool now. It's good to know even hellish weeks are only temporary, and that Vic had only decided to be completely insane for four days, not four months. And even though I thought I couldn't handle it while it was happening, apparently I did, and now it's over, and I'm fine again. I guess I didn't give myself enough credit, after all.

If there's one thing I'm learning through all this childcare hullabaloo, it's that I actually can handle more than I ever thought I could. And that's good to know. But I'm still crossing my fingers that next week will be an "easy" week (relatively speaking) and that there will fewer temper tantrums... from him and from me!