This re-entry week has been really hard. I'm so irritable, I feel like I'm a cactus with thorny things all over me. It came to a head when I couldn't find the Band-aid antiseptic rinse to clean Leila's ear piercing that had gone bloody, so I took everything out from the cabinet under the sink and threw it across the bathroom while yelling, "God Dammit!!!!"
Yesterday we went to the zoo and had a good day. I really needed a day where we were out of the house, looking at interesting things, and not fighting about room cleaning and TV watching and getting dressed and all the other 1000 things that we fight about on a daily basis. It was very helpful, but now we're back in the house, the prison of our own making.
Remember when we were kids, and summer vacay would come around and we would hang out with our friends on the street, and ride our bikes all over the place and roller skate down steep hills and make our own plans with our friends and just tell our parents, "Mom! I'm going to Kelly's!" And we knew to be home somewhere around dinner time, and then maybe go back out for a while? Remember those days? Its not like that anymore.
I am in charge of all Leila's entertainment options. She is just starting to call friends on the phone herself, but most of her friends are in camp or away on trips, so there aren't so many kids around. She just walked the dog around the block by herself the other day, but that's about as much independence as she's ever had, and she doesn't feel like riding her bike. So, we're mostly stuck in the house together unless I submit to going some place like the zoo, or she submits to going to the super market. It turns out that I am really bad at summer vacation.
Do you know what makes being a stay at home parent hard? Managing the tedium. Its worth it, and I want to be here for my kid, but if she doesn't clean her freakin' room and get dressed in the next ten minutes, I may have to take a valium and its not even noon.
We are probably going to the beach later. Maybe that will calm my frizzled nerves...
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