Gimme A Break

This morning, I was thisclose to losing it.

The past three days, I've been home with both the boys. Nathan had come down with a fever and a cough he caught from school so I had to keep him home. The first day, Andrew stayed home with the boys while I went out with a friend to do her assignment, which turned into a trek around the city as we searched for moon cakes. Nathan slept pretty much the whole time I was out.

Then, when it was my turn to stay home with the boys, Nathan suddenly gained energy and apparently some new-found parenting wisdom that he wished to bestow upon me at every chance. That, coupled with his insatiable curiosity and unending, unanswerable questions, meant a 5-year-old who just can't stop talking.

Normally, I'm able to field all his questions while taking care of Caleb and the house, but when I come down with whatever cold I was trying to protect the rest of Nathan's school from, any ounce of patience I have just flies out the window.

Caleb, for whatever reason, has been refusing food. Rather, he's been refusing the normal food he's supposed to be eating. As soon as the spoon gets close to his mouth, his lips lock down like a maximum security prison. Hand him an arrowroot cookie? Mouth opens. It's like magic. The evil kind.

Along with his blatant refusal to eat, he's been refusing naps and refusing to play on the ground while I make food. So all morning, I would set him down with some toys, run to the kitchen to tend to the chicken congee that I was trying to make since we're all sick, then run to grab Caleb before he got too close to the garbage, or pick him up so he would stop crying at the top of his lungs.

On one of my kitchen runs this morning, I was trying to quickly take the chicken out of the pot without dripping liquids on the ground. As I made the manoeuvre, the chicken fell apart and landed splat! on the ground.

That did not just ha-- ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!

After wiping up the mess, I marched to the computer room for a much-needed time out. I just needed to get my mind off of everything going wrong. I briefly contemplated locking myself in the computer room with the boys on the other side, and then I came across this video:


Nathan came in halfway through and asked me what the movie was about. Being a mother, I replied. I had seen it before, and while I didn't exactly have an uneventful day, it was a nice reminder that these troubles won't last. It didn't make all my problems melt away, but it did calm me down a little.

And then we had lunch.


This peek into what really goes on in our happy home brought to you today by:


Thank you, Stephanie, for encouraging us to keep it real. I've been trying to make my blog more real and less perfect, because this blog is about my life and it should be real. While I like to keep things positive and highlight the happy moments, I also want to be authentic and show my readers the imperfections.