sick days

Artie was sick this past week. He had a mouth full of ulcers and a few high fevers. It was a tough week.

There are moments in parenting that seem impossibly hard. How did our parents do it? How do people do it with more then one child? It was a week of little sleep, messy house, grumpy adults and one poor, sore, screaming boy. In an effort to keep Arthur indoors and help him mend there was a lot of play. 

After the pretend play, reading and drawing had been exhausted, I remembered I had the the holy grail of activities for sick days. Looking through a box of old toys. Three boxes of my childhood Disney collection came out to play.

The living room resembled Mickey Mouse war zone. But it did the trick and kept the boy entertained and inside for the good part of an hour, and the same the next day and the day after that.

My parenting lesson from all of this? I have made a smaller, more manageable box that is going in the linen cupboard and is full of some of my favourite figures. Next sick day I am set and hopefully without the Disney explosion.

Adam and I are still relatively new at this parenting gig. Each day gets a littler easier and we get a little more confident. Some days we do it all beautifully and easily but other days we bumble our way through.

We are learning, I am learning. There are a couple of things I have found out about myself from the tough times. The first is to take and appreciate any pocket of time I get to myself. And sit quietly in this moment. The other thing is that taking photos can turn a bad day good. It gives me a new perspective on the situation and allows all the big, messy out-of-control moments to seem smaller, less   terrible and controllable.

So there you have it. A tough, terrible, no good week that we survived. Maybe we are getting the hang of this parenting thing after all.