On Break-Taking for Mamas, plus Week in Pictures

It has been a very restful few days since I last checked in!

After I posted on Friday, I spent Saturday doing my usual gargantuan grocery shop which takes most of the morning and then prepping food for the week all afternoon (also typical on a Saturday).  Throughout the day, despite being really busy, I couldn't shake a completely exhausted feeling.  After supper I started to feel a headache coming on, then all my joints started to ache.  I had been feeling just a tiny amount of chest congestion all week and it hadn't gone away.  I was shivering and just had that feverish feeling, you know?  The next morning I woke up feeling the same and my temperature was 99.3... not really a fever, but considering that "normal" for me is around 97 ish, I felt that something must be up.  So, while fighting a huge amount of guilt because I wasn't really "that sick", I cancelled the voice lesson I had planned for that afternoon, and called in sick to my evening singing gig.

I took a day off.

And I really took it off-- no food prepping, housecleaning tasks, monitoring kids' school projects or showers or any of the other things that I normally do on my "day off".  I just laid in bed most of the day.

As I mentioned, I felt reaaally guilty about it.

This tends to happen with me... when I get sick, I don't typically get SO sick that I couldn't push through my regularly scheduled activities.  I wasn't and never did really get full-blown sick... the congestion never really materialized and I didn't have a real "fever".  So it was a tough decision to figure out whether I should just push through... because what if I really do have something and I'm going to transmit my germs to all of my colleagues or students?  All the different strains of flu are rampant at the school where I teach right now, and my having been exposed to every germ out there right now is pretty certain.

And then there's the idea that if I take a day off on the weekend, I can rest up and ward off the sickness that might hit me harder during the week, when I would miss pay if I took time off.

I really hate these types of decisions, for myself and for my children.  For my children I really don't feel too bad erring on the side of caution.  For myself, not so much.

I'm still not sure if I really had something, or if I was just overtired.  I feel pretty much normal now, after prioritizing sleeping about 9 hours every night since Saturday.

It got me thinking about Mamas and all our guilt feelings and how complicated it all is.  We have trouble saying no, feel guilty when we do, always feel like we should be doing more, and all the while if we were really honest and someone asked us what we really wanted to do, and we could answer truthfully without having to feel guilt, we would say that we just wanted to curl up and sleep for the next 48 hours.

It's a lot like the constant to-do list when I'm at home on my days off from work.  I feel a lot of sadness that J is constantly asking to play with me when it's just the two of us home, and if I were completely honest, I would tell her "of course I want to just abandon all these chores and play with you all day, because I can see that you're growing up before my eyes and these days when you'll ask to play with me are numbered, and you're my last baby and I want to stop time... but I can't get past the needs of the day.  I'm trapped... shackled... if I stop to play, nobody will have food to eat or Valentines to bring to class or medicine for their canker sores and we'll have to pay a billion dollars in library fines if we don't prioritize returning these books today because we've been putting it off for weeks."

And then her Dad comes home from work, and he immediately puts down his bag and scoops her up and lets her crawl all over him and tickle him, and covers her in kisses and asks how her day was.  They spend the next hour together and even though he is in the basement trying to do his weight-lifting workout while simultaneously hanging out with her, he never sounds annoyed, he never snaps, he giggles at her antics and lets her try doing push-ups and is nothing but patient.  Even after a long day at work.  He is the yin to my yang of impatient, short replies of "no, I can't play, I need to..." fill in the blank.

I'm overwhelmingly grateful for such a husband, so much so that I want to cry, while simultaneously wondering how he does it, how he remains patient, while I fail so miserably, so often.

Most days I beat myself up quite a bit.  But today, as my husband would encourage me to do if he were hearing me say this right now, I tried to remember the good.  I tried to remember that yes, I did take her to the library and we sat and just colored together at the coloring table for a full 30 minutes, chatting about the different colors and the books we would read together.  I remembered that we did sit and snuggle once we got home and read those books.  I remembered that she was proud to be my "shopping helper" at the pharmacy, and that we snuggled again while we ate lunch and watched videos of the National Track and Field Championships and saw powerful women breaking records, and that J said she would like to do that someday.  I remembered how easy it is for me to love and gush on all my children on the days when I've been at work, away from them all day.

All of that gets so easily erased in my brain, just because of a few hours of me feeling desperate to get a few things done and getting a little impatient with J's inability to entertain herself.

One would think I would learn these things after over 10 years as a Mama, right?  I'm still a work in progress.  I still need reminders.

So yes, it's probably true that I'm hard on myself, and even if I took an unnecessary day off this weekend... I don't think the world is going to implode.

How's that for a landslide of my thoughts?  Let's end with some photos of happy times I have had with these girls this week.

A lunch date at Whole Foods cafe with my oldest and my youngest!

On our way to central MA to visit my cardiologist at the coolest hospital ever!

My little helper is always so patient through my appointment (it helps that my cardiologist is just about the most funny guy in the world and always makes her giggle) so she gets treated to a bagel sandwich by the indoor waterfall afterwards.

We have fun riding and watching the big glass elevator

and making a wish on a penny

and giving a tour to Camille, our doll!

Not a bad day!

Perhaps this week I'll work on taking more pictures of my other three children!  Shouldn't be too hard since we're all on school vacation next week, and will be traveling to FL to visit my grandparents.  We haven't seen them since before J was born so we couldn't be more excited!  Stay tuned :)