A long 5 days

All day today I've been trying to decide what to write about tonight. I wanted to come up with some great topic that would be different, inspirational, not related to my children. Alas, I couldn't think of anything. That's a lie. I could think of things but they didn't mean anything. I thought about a recipe, but I didn't cook or bake anything that was worth mentioning. I didn't want to blog something just for the sake of it. It's better not to blog for an evening instead. I've realized that if I'm going to attempt to write a daily blog, then a lot of the time, in fact, probably most of the time, my children will be the subject. How can they not be? They are my life. I'm on maternity leave so I spend more time with them now than I was 3 months ago and than I will in 6 months from now. So of course they're going to be mentioned. So, that's the subject of my blog tonight. My children, or rather Charlotte.  It's a post about guilt again, I'm afraid. Guilt about trying to get it all done when I should have just sat.

If you've been reading my blog regularly, you'll know Charlotte, my three year old, has been sick since Thursday. She was sick most of the weekend. She seemed a lot better on Sunday, but we stayed close to home, letting her rest. On Monday she woke up and said she felt a lot better. She was happier, dancing around, she was more like our Charlotte. She ate some breakfast, all was good.

Andrew was off on Monday as he worked Saturday and we had some things we wanted to do as we hadn't been able to get out over the weekend. It's Harrison's Christening on Sunday and we wanted to get his gift and also go to Toys R Us to see what Santa could bring to Charlotte. Well, Charlotte was great. She of course loved Toys R Us, looked at books in Chapters and then endured an hour in the mall. Throughout this time, we had promised her if she was a good girl we would look for a dress for her when we went to Stavanger Dr. Yes, we were going to go there too, but decided to do that after her nap. 

So, we got home and Charlotte went for a nap. She had had a little lunch but didn't say she was feeling poorly, so we didn't think anything of it. 2 1/2 hours later, Charlotte woke up. She mentioned her tummy hurt. I asked her if she felt sick, she said no. I asked her if she was hungry, she said yes, so I gave her a banana and a granola bar. She gobbled them down. Then, some goldfish crackers in a bag, we headed to of all places, Costco. You see, I wanted to go to Costco with Andrew so we could decide if there was anything we wanted for Sunday. Walking around Costco Charlotte said her tummy hurt. I asked her if she thought she was going to be sick. No, she said. So we continued on. I had mentioned to Andrew we were going to have to hurry up as she wasn't feeling well, but did we stop? No, of course not. I wanted to go down just one more aisle, Charlotte by this time was in my arms and we were heading towards the cashiers. "Mommy", she said, "I need to get down". And then it happened. She threw up on the floor right next to the brown sugar in Costco. My poor little girl. Up came the banana and granola bar. As we tidied her up and called for someone with a mop, she apologized to me. I told her that there was no need to apologize to me, I apologized to her. I told her that we should have stayed home.

So, I took her to the bathroom and she was already feeling better. Andrew got us checked out and we took our little girl home. She felt fine once she was home, in fact she was in a great mood, but I still felt horribly guilty. We had done way too much with her but just didn't think. We just did.

So today, Tuesday, I kept Charlotte home to make sure she is better and rested. She's usually in daycare on Tuesdays and I had a jam packed day planned - get the winter tires put on the car, go to lunch with a friend and then go on my first hike with a group of local mammas. But, as with most days with two kids, the day didn't go as planned, but this time, it was entirely my fault.

But, I am happy to say, by the time she went to bed this evening she was feeling a lot better. We're going to take it easy again tomorrow(maybe a quick trip to get her dress) and hopefully she'll be good to go to school on Thursday. She's gotta be right? I've got to get things organized for Sunday. 

And that's how it goes. We try to balance kids and everything else without compromising anything. The thing is, it's all about compromise and sometimes we compromise the wrong thing while not intentionally doing so. We expect so much from our kids and from ourselves that we think if we push our limits just a little we'll get the outcome we're looking for. Instead, it sometimes backfires and we end up missing out on more than we would have had we just stopped and thought for a minute. Charlotte wouldn't have gotten sick if we hadn't pushed her on Monday and probably could have gone to school today. But, there's no point in thinking about what could have been. Instead, I hope I'll learn from this and will remember, the next time Charlotte or Harrison is sick, to just stay home, look after them and forget about everything else.

Charlotte was feeling better last night and actually asked to have a picture taken with Harrison.
It wasn't until I was taking the picture that I thought it might not have been a good idea.