Well, things took a sudden turn to the exact opposite of love. Not Hate, but pretty dismal.
Our Valentine's day started off pretty darn great. We had fun decorating for our evening event; The Square Dance I mentioned in my previous post. But we also had the impending doom and gloom of Mark leaving for two weeks and then it got much worse.
Poor Mark, always trying to do the right thing. I really must be mopey and miserable when I hear news that he might be leaving. In order to protect my emotions, he chose not to even warm me that he might be leaving for a prescribed fire in Oklahoma for 2 weeks. The news actually leaked to me through a friend. Oops, Mark couldn't win on this one. I'm only blogging about it because it was a lesson learned. He now knows that we have come to a phase in our lives where I can't be surprised about him leaving if he knows there might be a chance of it happening. Yes, I realize that it is sometimes beyond his control. Especially during fire season. I get that. But I need a chance to get my game face on, buck up and kick into single parent mode.
Mark left Thursday morning, and I did my best to make our Valentine's Day special. Truth be told, it was just an ordinary day but I was going to do my best to make it extraordinary. Big mistake.
Square dancing is not fun as a solo parent. The first hour started out promising. Arts and crafts, visiting with friends and then on to the dancing. It looked a little something like this.......
Then things went downhill from there.......Cruz spilled 4 (yes, I said FOUR) glasses of lemonade all over the floor and he managed to test one the lemonade spouts behind my back while I was cleaning up the fourth consecutive spill (with very non absorbent-recycled-worthless paper towels). He turned into Chucky within a matter of minutes. I sat him down as I gathered my senses that it was time for us to call it a night and he looked like this.......
I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Cooper fell asleep on the car ride home (only about a 5 minute drive. If that). I put Cruz down right away and that was my Valentine's. Plus Cruz waking up every 2 hours. That is not like him at all. He is my sleeper.
Duh! Mother of the Year, right here. Yes, I was aware that Cruz had been draining snot for the past few days but other than him turning into an absolute monster and not sleeping at all, I had no clues anything was wrong. No fever, no remarks to tell me what was wrong. I just thought I was doomed.
Finally, a friend calmly mentioned that perhaps Cruz had an ear infection. What is wrong with me?! Why didn't I think of that? Sure enough, poor Cruzie had a double ear infection. I am an idiot. The doctor gave us antibiotics and numbing drops and we were on our (not so) merry way.
Fast forward 3 more days of living with Chucky, and today he finally woke up with a glimmer of his old self. I honestly was beginning to worry that it wasn't the ear infection but the dreaded 2's. I thought to myself, I don't know if I can survive this. It was that bad.
But here I am. Blogging about it and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. And I no longer want to rub it in with Mark and be the martyr. Marks's job requires him to travel. A lot. It's not his fault and he hates it just as much as we do. He learned that he can't try to protect me from the inevitable. He will be gone for long periods at a time and I have to accept it. It is what it is.
Also, kids get sick and they don't always warn you ahead of time. Was Cruz trying to protect me just like his Dad did? My guys are always looking out for me.
2 comments:
I don't have any wonderful words. I'm so sorry that you had such a sucky Valentine's day/week.
Oh man...putting on the game face & bucking up is hard sometimes. I can't even imagine how much harder it is with kiddos. John doesn't always say much when he has a chance of going out either because you never know if it's a 10% or a 90% chance. Cheers to you super Mom!
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