I have been selfishly pining for this day all week.
I have;
- silence
- light rain
- an empty house
and holy shit does it feel good.
Dave spent the week working in Wellington and upon his return yesterday, Nixon gave him a cursory glance and a quick high five then resumed following me around, tugging on my shirt, standing on my feet {which I hate more than anything} and yelling “MAMM, MAMM” every five seconds for around 8 hours. I just sat here holding my head after typing that, feeling like a bit of a failure for complaining about my beautiful little guy, but yesterday was a struggle – on top of a myriad of 10 year old struggles over the past 5 days ::::::shakes fist at Xbox – bane of my life:::::.
When Dave did arrive home at around 10am, he was so busy with work that he spent the day chained to his laptop, no relief in sight. Except naptime. The day before, Nix had napped for 3 1/4 hours so my respite expectations were high. Too high it seemed. 1 hour was all we got plus a screaming wake-up after which it took me about 25 minutes to calm him down. I ended up popping him in the baby seat on my bike, grabbing E and cruising the streets for a while simply because surely no-one could demand anything from me when I’m on a bike right?
We salvaged the afternoon with some ice cream and a lemonade popsicle for Nix {oh yes I did!} and headed home for the dinner shift.
Keeping me going throughout the day was the promise of an evening run. Headphones in, Hole, Dinosaur Jr and Nirvana spurring me on as I try not to die from breathing in the hottest, most humid air ever. Pumped. Until E decided to run with me. He normally rides the 5.5km so I was really unsure about how it was going to play out. I imagined him giving up 1km in and me having to drag him home, totally gutted because I couldn’t get a good workout in. Kid smashed it. He power walked when he needed to, told me to go ahead then chased me down, he filled my mama-cup to bursting just when I needed it.
Need it I did as Nixon fought bedtime {something I had also been looking forward to all day} for like, the first time in his life wtf. 9pm was when Dave and I sat down to eat dinner.
Oh day of days. Nothing totally bad happened, so……so, gawd, it must have been me. Me at the end of 5 days of solo-parenting through the last week of the school holidays. That and I’m still pissed about getting attacked by a rooster.
So, I don’t have a whole day to pull myself back together into the Model of Motherhood perfection that I normally am HA, but I do have about 3 hours until the boys arrive home from their trip to the museum – overtired and overdue for a too short nap no doubt, but ready for a cuddle with a grateful and recharged Mama.