Parenting is such a weird job; full of contradictions and surprises, both good and bad. The days are long, but the years are short, as they say. And, another good one is that its the only job where you keep getting promoted no matter how well (or badly) you do. Today's oxymoronic parenting truth was that on the days when you have the least energy and it is hardest to be on top of you game, those are the days when you must be on top of you game and pull out all the stops.
By which I mean to say that the Little Dude has a cold.
I HATE COLDS!
Really, before I was a parent, I had no idea how badly colds sucked. Sure, I'd had colds, and they were certainly unpleasant, but experiencing a cold through your child, for whom you are completely responsible, is a whole other thing.
It started in the middle of the night last night, and I'm not going to go on about it forever because a) I've probably railed about colds before, and b) I'm so effing tired I can barely focus my eyes, but suffice it to say, I don't think I had an unbroken period of sleep longer than 45 minutes last night. There was intermittent crying and nose wiping and sneezing and crying that required my presence approximately every three quarters of an hour from 11:00 p.m. on. Finally, at 4:45, I could handle it no more and went and woke up Hubs and he took the last hour of his night (because he gets up at 6:45 to get ready for work) so that way I got ONE hour of uninterrupted sleep. (a note on equality and parenting: when neither of us worked outside the home and when we were grad students we shared the night waking equally, one night on, one night off. But since Hubs works with heavy machinery these days, I don't want him risking slicing off a thumb due to exhaustion. So I do the night wake ups and then get to sleep in on the weekends.)
Anyhow, thank the Lord that the Baby slept perfectly through it all. And also many thanks that I am not sick too (yet). So it could have been worse. But the day was kind of rough. I abandoned all thought of housework or getting stuff done, and just concentrated on nose wiping and getting through it all. And to be fair, the Little Dude is not so bad when he's sick, just a little more fragile and in need of amusement. Also, getting him to keep his germy little paws (and face, and mouth) off his brother required almost a Herculean effort in the form of constant vigilance. My hands are raw from washing. But mostly, the biggest challenge was that I was very, very tired, and then I have a hard time being more paitient, attentive, focused and creative than I usually need to be. See how that works? More need + less resources = parenting challenge.
After nap can be a touchy time even when nobody is sick, but it was really hard today. He only napped for an hour (usually does 1.5 to 2 hours) so he was definitely up with a bang and a wail. And naturally the Baby was up at the exact same time and in immediate need of breastfeeding. I had to reach way down into the bottom of my bag of tricks and rummage around to find something diverting for the Little Dude that did not involve rubbing his snotty nose on his baby brother. But I managed it. Ladies and gentlemen (but mostly ladies, I'm aware) I give you, bread tag fishing.
I'd picked up a little fish tank fish net for him the other day, as he was obsessing over one at a friends house the other day, and had intended to save it for his Birthday tomorrow, but we were in desperate need of fun today, so we busted it out early. He was rather non-plused about it at first (it was not green as was the one he'd seen at our friend's place) but when I added some water to the fun, things definitely started looking up.
So basically, I filled a small recycling bin with water (got him to help me fill it one juice jug at a time; part of the fun) and then threw in anything I had on hand that I thought might float. Popsicle sticks, empty thread spools and a whole bunch of bread tags.
Items can be fished out of the bin and dumped into the big stainless steel bowl.
The bread tags were the preferred fishing item. And of special interest (you guessed it) were the orange and green ones.
I knew there was a reason I was saving these things. I have, literally, three jars full of bread tags. We eat a lot of bread, and I just can't throw these things away. I love the shape of them. And the colours. And the way they are stamped with a date. I don't know if I've mentioned before, but I've got silver bread tag pendants with the boys' birth dates stamped on them that I wear all the time. They were my first mother's day presents, after the birth of each baby. I got them from a Montreal jewelry designer named Melanie Favreau. She's also on etsy, and makes some really cute stuff.
Anyhow, I'm going to take my tired self off to bed now. But before I do, I have to go wrap a present. Yep, its the Little Dude's birthday tomorrow. Three years old! Can you believe that? I'll be back soon to tell you all about it. But now, sleep beckons. For at least 45 minutes at a time.
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