My Epic Mommy Fail

I originally began this blog as a way of talking about my crazy kids and admitting that I sometimes mess up as a parent. Over time this has evolved into a crafting and activity blog that I am really proud of. Today, however, I will be returning to my original intent to talk about my epic mommy fail.
My 5 year old daughter had her first soccer game yesterday and we were all excited. I painted her nails orange to match her team colors and put matching ribbons in her hair. I even dressed the boys in her team colors so they could cheer her on properly.  Everything was going great until an hour before the game, and then total chaos erupted.
My three year old son had an accident, refused to put his socks and shoes on, and basically had a melt down. My daughter overloaded and started screaming and running around the house like the Tasmanian Devil, and the baby started fussing. Even the dog went a little crazy. The clock was ticking down to game time when my husband walked through the door from work and said, "Okay, let's go." All I could do was stare at him in disbelief. "Let's go?" Did we look ready?
After a lot of bickering and frustration the family was loaded into the minivan and ready to go. Enter complication #2: We didn't know which field her team was playing on and by the time we spotted the bright orange 5-year-olds kicking a ball around we were late. At this point I was so high strung that I was ready to cry, but at least we were there and my little girl was playing. She wasn't out for more than five minutes when she fell and bonked her head. After this she refused to play. My husband and I tried everything from bribery to reminding her that Rapunzel wouldn't quit. Nothing was working and this is where things get ugly. I told my freezing, overloaded little five-year old to suck it up and quit being a pansy. We don't quit in this family. For the remainder of the game I bounced back and forth between bribing her to play and threatening to pull her from cheer if she was going to be a little quitter. During all of this I was bickering with my husband over parenting styles.
Finally, the game was over and her team had won. She still got a pat on the back and a treat from her amazing coach.
After we got home I realized how badly I had over reacted, and what I had actually been doing. I am terrified of failure and I projected that onto my child. I apologized, gave her a hug, and promised to keep Crazy Mommy her cage next time. After the kids were in bed I looked over the pictures I had taken at the game. They were all of my daughter playing and my son cheering her on. You would never be able to tell from looking at those photos that an epic mommy failure was going on behind the scenes.
I failed. Badly. My husband likened my behavior to that of "those horrible moms you see on TV". Ouch. I learned my lesson and I will try to keep things in perspective from now on.