Small Victories

They both have colds! 

Thankfully, even after the check up and annual booster, The Dog is fine, but both The Boy and The Girl have colds. Stinky coughing can’t breathe through the mouth type colds.

When I picked The Girl up from Nursery today she cried her eyes out. I was just being told how happy she was and what a good day she had had when...Total meltdown in the main entrance hall. So everyone could witness my parenting skills...she had, immediately proceeding this, tried to crush The Boy to death by giving him a cuddle so he wasn’t happy either. 

After a few hugs and a calm pep-talk about how she could come back tomorrow I usher my screaming children (“noooo, stay! Mummy back! Back!) into the car to experience the drive-of-hell home while both children experiment with their full lung capacity.

Quite what hell anyone who saw it thaught she was going home to I dread to think! 

I phoned the husband just so that he could listen. More because I will never be able to do it justice when I try to explain it to him tonight. 

I half expected social services to be waiting on the doorstep when I get home. Thankfully they wearn’t but we are on a knife-edge. The evening procedure, which is becoming our ‘norm’ could go either way. The Husband has told me he might be late so I steal myself for a rough bedtime and set about making supper. Not that The Girl is saying she wants any. I’m never sure how to react to her outright disobedience really. I try asking, I try direct instruction, I try demanding, I try distraction and persuasion and negotiation... tonight I need to be careful because at any point we could end up in tantrum territory. All the time I am also trying to manage the baby as well, keep him from further tears. Sometimes it is easier to just all sit on the floor and cry. 

Still, we make it through supper ok and the husband arrives home eirler then he thought.

Then, despite everything, The Girl chooses tonight to be the first night she dosen’t cry at bedtime and beg daddy to stay with her for over 2 weeks. Like the old days she just goes to bed when Daddy takes her up. 

They never stop surprizeing you. Even in the midst of one of our worse evenings to date, she goes and does something great and I feel so relived that she seams to be out of this little sleep funk that I immediately forget the rest of the evenings drama.

Nothing teaches you to appreciate small victories like children, in this case, toddlers.