Epic Failure

Yes, that would be me. Total and utter failure. Or at least it felt that way many times this week.

As you know, my poor little man woke up with a fever last Saturday, and I'm not even kidding when I say that this weekend was the first he's seemed completely back to himself. Almost a week, y'all. With a sick kid. Some of you are nodding your head with me, right? What a week!

My sweet baby has never been sick before, especially not with a fever like this, and he totally became a mama's boy. Usually he plays independently for a large part of the day, running amok through the house, playing with his toys, being adorable, all that fun stuff. But for the past several days he's wanted nothing but to be in my arms. And knowing how terrible he felt, that's all I wanted too! I hate seeing my kids sick. It breaks my heart.

That would have been bad enough. Poor little sick sweetheart. But this week also happened to have other situations emerge as well. Erik has been working to renew his teacher's license, and he needed to finish all of his papers this week. A lot of papers! And of course his brilliant wife needed to edit them all for him. A lot of papers! Plus he was in a wedding and was gone for the bachelor party, the rehearsal dinner, and the wedding itself. Whew!

As for Ava, I know she felt neglected this week, and that's part of why I feel like a failure. I really thought I could be SuperMom; I really can't. Sadly, she spent a great deal of time alone in her playroom. No temper tantrums, thank goodness, but definitely some sadness at being second-in-line behind an ill baby brother. And you know what? The fact that she handled it amazingly well, never once being difficult, just makes me feel like more of a failure. I should be proud that I've raised her to behave so beautifully! I am! I am! Go away, guilt!

Starting to see the epic failure here?

I probably called the doctor about five times checking about Hudson. They patiently assured me that this was a viral thing going around, that it took quite awhile to run its course, and that Hudson seemed to be weathering it just fine. But I was so darn frustrated that I couldn't do anything for him, other than hold him and try to make the time pass easier for him. Add in a neglected-feeling daughter, a messy house that has reached never-before-seen levels of nastiness, flowers that desperately need to be watered, a toilet that went on the fritz, and all those papers to edit, plus having my husband gone quite a bit, and I just wanted to lay my head down at night and tremble.

Oh, well, as Scarlet O'Hara so eloquently stated: After all, tomorrow is another day.

I can rejoice that my son is back to himself! I can spend some focused time with my daughter! I can send my husband's license renewal materials off in the mail! As for myself? I can take a nice, deep breath! Nope, it wasn't an easy time, and nope, we didn't have a perfect, delightful week, and nope, we didn't make it to Holiday World or the pool this week. But you know what? We made it through together. And that's what families do.