The baby girl and I have been quarantined to the house for much of this past week with the flu. Now for a stay at home mom who is an extrovert and who finds life and energy when she leaves the house and interacts with the outside world, and who has also canceled all of her social plans for most of the week because of a sick child and self, and who can't even go outside for walks because it's so cold outside it would surely prolong our sicknesses AND who's husband is gone for most of the weekend running a climbing competition, you can imagine how much I may be starting to lose my mind.
So yesterday in an attempt to DO SOMETHING, I started recording parts of my day so I could blog a day-in-the-life type of thing. A day in the life of a stir crazy mom of a toddler with the flu.
(Disclaimer: This somehow got crazy long and detailed but that is just how bored I'm getting. Please humor me. Or feel free to stop reading, it's all good.)
Paisley woke me up around 7am. I had been up with her for much of the night before, because trying to sleep when you have the flu is the worst and don't we all know it. I was very groggy so the next couple hours are kind of a blur, but I do know that I managed to feed us both breakfast, as well as get us both showered and dressed.
By the way.
"I always think there's something rather foreign about high spirits at breakfast,"
- Carson from Downton Abbey, season 4. This is my new favorite quote of all of the quotes.
So. There was a lot of booger wiping, book reading, little people arranging, and consoling of my poor, sweet, incredibly crabby toddler who in her fragile state chose to be offended by nearly everything I did. Other things that happened: I decided not to do yoga because I felt too sick, I forgot to do the laundry.
Then it was lunchtime. I watched as Paisley spread cream cheese from her bagel through her freshly cleaned hair. It was annoying, but I was glad that her appetite was starting to return. At the end of lunch she got incredibly mad at me when I started scrubbing her face and head with a washcloth instead of giving her a cookie like she asked for.
She was very, very, very mad.
Then it was naptime. I didn't make her clean up her toys and books before bed since she's been sick and since she was still distraught over the cookie and sometimes you just have to choose your battles, you know? Plus I was tired and lazy feeling.
Once she was in bed it was time to decide what to do with naptime. I really wanted to do pastels down in my studio while watching the latest Downton Abbey episode. But I also just really wanted to sleep because I was very tired. And sick and lazy feeling. So I decided to compromise and start with an hour long nap (even though I normally try to avoid them), and hope that I'd still have another hour of her naptime left once I woke up. Baby girl usually sleeps between an hour and 15 minutes and two hours, so it was a risky move. When I woke up from my nap I oh so carefully crept to the kitchen and stirred Emergence-C into my water with my finger instead of a spoon so as not to make any unnecessary noise. I was craving a dessert-like treat, as I usually am at this time of day, but our kitchen is fairly bare right now and I had eaten the last of the ice cream the night before. And we obviously had no cookies. I started digging around like a muskrat and my instincts led me to a 6 inch chocolate Santa back in the recesses of my cupboard, forgotten from Christmas.
Score! Excellent.
I headed downstairs to my studio and started Downton, ate three inches of Santa and brainstormed what I would draw. But then I heard a small, familiar, quivery voice over the moniter..."Mama..."
So I scurried back upstairs, kicking myself when I passed the laundry room and realizing I had still forgotten to put a load in. Downton and pastels would lie in wait for me until next time when I would definitely skip taking a nap, I told myself.
In order to make right the lack of dessert situation that had been bringing both of us down, I decided to make some cookies while Paisley rearranged whatever furniture she was strong enough to move in the living room. (I am serious when I say that girlfriend loves to organize, and arrange, and sort, and tidy.) I made banana oat cookies with chocolate chips (Brian insists they are actually muffin tops though).
So then we had cookies for dinner and egg salad sandwiches and clementines for dessert. Plus Paisley had peas, because sometimes I worry that if she doesn't have something from all the food groups for every meal then something might go horribly wrong. I know, it's irrational! Maybe it will wear off by my next kid.
By the way, how much longer do I have before she discovers that I am a complete hypocrite because I have her eat peas somewhat frequently but I myself will not put them anywhere near my mouth? Peas are seriously one of the worst things I could ever be asked to eat. Whenever they touch my hand I have to stop what I'm doing and run to the sink and scrub with soap because of the smell. If they are in a salad or fried rice however, I'm generally fine with it. And isn't that just funny, how these things work?
Paisley's a class-act pea eater though. She likes to eat lots of them at once, so she painstakingly tries to stack 4-5 peas between her little toddler pointer finger and thumb, dropping them several times and sighing, "uh-oh," before trying again with great concentration. It's somewhat painful to watch, but also sort of delightful, if you know what I mean.
After dinner we read books and did puzzles, and I was surprised by how she no longer needed my help to fit the pieces in. Then we walked around the rooms of the house and cleaned up our messes, with a promise of reading Corduroy Goes to the Doctor if she helped. Jammies were pulled on, toothbrushes were wrestled into mouths, more books were read, prayers were murmured and kisses given out.
Bedtime.
I breathed a sigh as I shut her door and then finally remembered to put a load of laundry in the wash.
Wondering what to do with my hot, exciting Friday night by myself, I wandered downstairs and turned on the TV, and realized it was the Olympics opening ceremony. "Cool!" I thought. I watched for about five minutes and then put in Bridesmaids instead. I laughed super loud when Annie said to Steve the flight attendant, "Are you an appliance..." Gepetto did her best to take up as much of my lap as she possibly could with her weird long body and elbowed the computer off my legs whenever I tried to check facebook.
I stayed up until the hubs came home so I could get ten minutes of adult interaction before we crashed into bed, which meant I didn't get to sleep before 1am, which turned out to not be the wisest decision since I was back up with Paisley at 5am because of her cough.
And so here we are! You now know far more than you ever hoped to about how my day went yesterday. I'll have the hubs read this later, since when he asked me what I did yesterday I was too tired to try and explain to him that it was basically nothing.
By the way, none of the pictures in this post were taken yesterday, or even very recently for that matter. I've been far too sick and tired to pick up the camera, and Paisley has had far too much snot crystalized to her face to get her picture taken.
