There is a brief but important window where my four-year-olds genuinely believe I have magic. And that I can transfer that magic into their blankies at night so they won’t have any nightmares.

Every night, for a few magic months, they make plaintive requests: “Mom, will you charge my blankie?” And so I wrap their blankets around my shoulders, close my eyes, do an invisible sort of transfer, and declare it all charged up for the evening.

Sometimes they still wake up with nightmares, and so I tell them, “Silly mom! I must not have charged it all the way!” and I repeat the ritual and, such is the depth of their trust in Mom Magic, that they go right back to sleep.

If that’s not magic, then what is?

“Do dads have magic?” Juno asked recently, to which I replied (a bit selfishly), “No, only moms.”

“Will I have magic?” she asked with round eyes, and I choked up a little, replying, “Yes, my dear, some day I suspect you might.”

It is a brief but important window that ends in a fizzle of forgetting to charge blankies one night, then two nights in a row, then three. But then again, four years later, Hudson surprised me recently by requesting a blankie charge of his own.

Last night, Juno was impossible. We were coming off a no-nap family vacation day, arriving home past bedtime and overdue on dinner, and Juno was doing what Juno does best: intransigence. And through weeping and wailing and howling and hollering, and literally rioting about every minuscule detail that she did not personally approve of in life, she requested with huffy, tentative, shaky breath, “Will you charge my blankie for me?”

Reader: I declined.

I said, “No, Juno, Mom is angry. The magic does not work when Mom is angry.”

Anger is a state I’m occupying this summer more often than I care to admit. The kids are off their routine and it shows: in their behavior, in their eating, in their semi-regular meltdowns. My routine is shifting to accommodate, but I’m unwilling for it to be so. There’s so much opportunity in my email inbox at work right now if I just had time to shape it.

I confessed shamefully to a friend today that I’m almost enjoying work right now more than being a parent. This balance is not usually this off-kilter. It’s a horrifying thing to type out loud.

And yet, there it is. The truth in print that sometimes the right email in your inbox is more predictably satisfying than making a home-cooked meal that your four-year-old rejects (brazenly and with a complete lack of tact).

I’m scrolling every SAHM’s highlight reels right now of their blissful summers spent tubing on the lake, and lounging at the pool, and waiting in line for an early morning donut drop, and I’m constantly wondering how they possess so much more Mom Magic than I do.

When did I become so tragically unfun that I’m the mom counting bites at lunch so that my kids don’t hit hangry o’clock before dinner?

Last night I left Juno’s room in a huff and had a good cry. Head down on the banister, tears dripping at my feet—a real mascara smear.

There must be boundaries in parenting, I reminded myself, but refusing to charge up a blankie will not be one of them.

And so, I re-entered the room. I pulled her blankie around my shoulders, closed my eyes, and waited for the magic to transfer. It is a brief but important window.

Juno was grateful. We seemed to find reprieve from the tantrum. She had no nightmares.

You wanna know what the real magic is? That despite it all, she still believes in me.