I Coulda Been a Camper February 10, 2008
In the last week this parenting thing has felt like running a marathon on a treadmill - working my guts out and going nowhere fast.
Finn has done well at kinder, but he’s still doing orientation so is only going twice a week, rather than four times. 6 hours a week of that kind of stimulation is really just a tease to a kid who’s been to childcare since he was tiny. At home he’s been argumentative and just plain silly a lot of the time. It all ratchets up a notch when Mark get home too as he’s missing having his dad around to hang out with. Every morning after Mark leaves for work Finn tells me that he wants to go everywhere Dad goes. And some mornings I dearly wish he did.
I know this is all due to the transitions from childcare to kinder, from having Mark home every day to him being back at work and so on, so I’m not tearing my hair out yet. I’m confident that as the weeks go on, kinder begins in earnest and our life settles into our new routine Finn will settle down and go back to being the easygoing kid he usually is. In the meantime though I spend a part of every day wondering whether my head really is going to explode.
Leila, for her part, has been ill all week. I had to collect her from childcare early on Tuesday and she couldn’t go on Thursday and missed her swimming lesson on Friday. She’s gone from having an incredibly runny nose,to throwing up, to running a mild temperature and now seems to be just really, really grumpy so I’m hopeful that she’s on the mend.
It seemed like a bad idea to take her camping this weekend so she and I stayed home while Mark and Finn went to Portarlington. Mark offered to stay and let me go, but I’m a fair weather camper at the best of times and knew I would probably worry about Leila if I went so I was happy to stay behind with the bub. In hindsight I think I might have preferred wrestling with the tent to dealing with the grumpy Little Princess. I’m knackered.
And so another week begins. With any luck Leila will be back at childcare on Tuesday and, with Finn at kinder, I will have a whole 3 hours of not carrying a child around, getting snot on my clothes, or having an argument about why we need to brush our teeth every day.
Yikes. My head has been exploding with only one kid to deal with. Having 1 + 1 + the sickness factor … my head hurts even thinking about it. Hope Leila is getting better very quickly.
My parents had a brilliant way of combatting any teeth brushing arguments. They would simply pull their plates out and toothlessly regale us with stories of what happens when you don’t brush every day. I’ve already found myslef telling Maddie about this, just to keep her motivated.