Just when you were thinking this little corner of the Internet had quieted down...

I thought I lost all shame when I gave birth. I got to this weird place where I was perfectly okay with random hospital staff "checking" me, which of course is code-speak among birthing center staff for "lifting up whatever happens to be covering your nether-regions and having a poke around." My usually intense sense of privacy about this most personal space was completely compromised in the interest of bringing a healthy baby into the world.

This same baby, however, is causing me humiliations galore now that she's in second grade. Defiant. Disrespectful. Prone to tantrums. Alienating peers and authority figures at an alarming rate and generally making me wish I'd stopped at one -- and longtime visitors to this blog may remember that the first one gave me quite enough trouble, thank you very much.

There are phone calls from her teacher expressing concern and bewilderment. There was the time she hit her Brownie troop leader and ditched the Veterans Day parade. And the fireworks backstage at Nutcracker were a lot more spectacular than anything happening onstage. Bedtime is a battle. Getting ready for school is a battle. Apparently school itself is a battle. And just forget about homework.

There are times when her behavior triggers such blind hatred in me that I can't even trust myself to speak to her because when I do I always say something I wish I hadn't. She remembers everything, too, so I'm already envisioning the tell-all she'll be penning as a young adult wherein I play the role of the cruel and psychotic mother.

Actually I've been joking about that since she started forming her own opinions about things (which was well before she turned two); it's just becoming less funny as she becomes more literate.

I think the worst part of it is the way this took me by surprise. I knew Danny was going to be a handful. I knew he was a bundle of spastic, unfocused energy who was too smart for his own good. I knew he couldn't decipher facial expressions and understood objects better than people. I knew what motivated everything he did, because in him I saw myself.

Sadie is different. She was highly social from a young age, moving easily from group to group. She was even more precocious than her brother in her language acquisition, and actually had her first rudimentary conversation with her brother when she was only 15 months old. People flocked to her. Everybody knew her name and seemed to like her. While I was waist-deep wading through Danny's meltdowns and trips to the principal's office and fretting because he didn't seem to have a friend in the world, it looked like Sadie was going to be the easy one. Every bit as smart as her brother -- if not smarter -- she seemed happy to follow directions and quietly get through the "busy work" of school.

I didn't even notice the early signs, or thought they were minor things she'd outgrow. But when she was seven and a half and biting, and more likely to scream incoherently at the slightest provocation than to calmly let us know something was bothering her, and when being hit or kicked in her blind rage became almost a daily occurrence -- when I realized I was afraid to take her places because I didn't know what she would do -- in kicked the self-blame and loathing.

I found a great resource yesterday, thanks to the school psychologist. It's really hard to implement because it requires that I somehow ignore the fact that this child is deliberately pushing my buttons and try to address whatever it is she's having trouble with -- and this is the hard part -- collaboratively. And honestly, I suck at it. But the guy who came up with this approach said it was okay because it IS hard, and that it's better to try it and suck at it than not to try.

The good doctor is careful to say he doesn't blame bad parenting; nevertheless, I find myself having to confront the fact that my children are scattered and disorganized because that's the example I set for them. These are skills I want them to have, but feel completely unequipped to give them. Hell, they're skills I'd like to have. I could go into all the reasons that I managed to reach adulthood without acquiring these skills, but it wouldn't solve the problem.

Oh, and let me cap off the quivering mass of frustration and helplessness that I've become with the news that my father is very, very sick. He's going in for a third blood transfusion and is looking at two very serious and potentially unpleasant treatment options to replace the current unsuccessful treatment he's been receiving -- which in addition to not actually working has been causing fluid buildup around his vital organs and honestly could kill him. In a year he's gone from zero medical attention to maximum invasive treatment because he had this very serious undiagnosed condition.

He's also 500 miles away.

So excuse me if I'm having trouble focusing on Danny's pinecar derby car, or the requirements for his Arrow of Light, or if I couldn't give a shit less whether it's time to sell Girl Scout Cookies. I live in the rubble of four people who literally don't know how to keep a living space tidy (for which only two of whom have a legitimate excuse), rewashing laundry that goes from basket to floor to hamper without ever having been worn, shuffling through an avalanche of bills and less important paperwork hoping I haven't missed anything critical. I start to clean and find an hour later that the place actually looks worse than before because all the stuff that was shoved in corners and on top of furniture is now in the middle of everything demanding to be dealt with or shoved back where it was. How do other people do this?

Crying doesn't help, but sometimes that's all I can manage to do. It's been a really tough week.