Her mom isn't in the picture and I'm basically a stay at home mom. I say basically because I don't feel like I'm a mom or have the right to call myself a mom. We want a baby but I've put that on hold because I'm freaking exhausted by his first born. She's 5, and I have zero personal space and I'm constantly cleaning like the worst messes I DO NOT know how I can turn my back for two minutes and there will be sharpie on the wall. I love her I really do I'd kill for her and that runs deep but good lord can she really be a handful and she wants to test every limit I have. She threw an absolute fit the other night because we didn't have a ball to take outside. So she screamed at me about this ball that doesn't exist and when she does that I literally just don't respond to her, like I refuse to bend to her will just because she's throwing a fit so she'll test and see how far she can go and usually she stops but this night she didn't.

I feel guilty for this but I locked myself in our bedroom. I let her scream at the door while I locked myself in the bedroom and breathed because she wasn't just screaming, she wanted to scream while hanging onto me and like scream in my ear so I just locked myself in my room because I felt like I was being tormented. I am trying everything I possibly know with her and I noticed that when she gets tired she acts like that. In general, she's well behaved and VERY smart so I feel like this behavior is literally a choice. I talk to her about it and I explain that acting out like that doesn't help her case, and that I know she can do better than that at expressing her feelings. And I'm having her take daily naps because she wakes up much nicer.

I am exhausted though. Tell me I'm not a fucking failure because I feel like one. The house is a mess. The only things I can really keep up with are keeping her clean, fed, and cared for and then keeping myself fed and cared for.

She does lose privileges. Right now she's grounded from her tablet and colouring because her attitude has been so bad