This Thursday was the worst day for me, so far, of The Pandemic.
Aside from the pandemic and everything that goes with it, Cecily is in a weird place with her naps, where I’m lucky to get one “real” nap (where she’s asleep in her crib rather than on me/while nursing, for more than half an hour) per day. The rest of the day, she cries if I put her down, and if she manages to console herself after that offense, she cries if I leave her sight. I thought Miryam was a “mama’s girl.” Not like this! So, anything I want to do, I mostly have to do one-handed, or with baby cries in the background.
The big kids are in the midst of The Worst of Allergy Season here in north Texas: wherein we up their medication from Zyrtec to Flonase, and add Benadryl and/or eye drops as needed, and their bath frequency increases, too. It’s the annual Dilemma of Spring for our family: gorgeous weather calling us outdoors, and terrible allergies forcing us back into the air conditioning. This is a daily struggle for the kids. They want to go outside, they play and are so happy to be riding their tricycles, collecting silk worms and caterpillars, getting their fresh air and exercise… But there comes a point, every day, when each one comes to me in distress:
Kid: “My eyes hurt!” *rubs eyes with grimy hands*
Me: *cringes*
This was my struggle as a kid, too. I’ve just learned to stop touching my eyes, and to be content indoors when all the world is awash in sunshine and abloom with tree pollen. I wipe their eyes with a warm washcloth, help them thoroughly wash their hands with soap. About every third day, or whenever Luke’s eyes are so swollen upon waking that it looks like he got in a fight the night before, I just make them stay inside all day to recover, so they can go back out and repeat the cycle the next day.
So anyway, between the clingy baby, and the allergies and weather dictating whether the big kids can go out or not, and with all our externally imposed routines on hold because of the pandemic, it’s been absolutely impossible to make a predictable routine at home that keeps everyone feeling informed, sort of in control, and happy, lately. This mom is getting mentally worn out from adapting daily, instead of using autopilot where I can, which usually leaves more energy for unexpected things that need to be taken care of, and spontaneous requests the kids make. Under the current circumstances, I don’t get the chance to recharge regularly, to replenish my depleted mental energy. I used to have 2 days a week of 5 hours of “just the baby and me”—if she napped, I got silence. Now, while she naps, I’m likely to be interrupted by the other two, which was already the case most days of the week, but not EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK.
Allow me to illustrate.
Every afternoon, before “rest time” begins, I insist that Miryam and Luke each go potty. Then they each pick a book and I read to them. Then they go separately to their separate rooms for an hour or so of relative quiet and isolation, so that everyone gets a break from each other; no fights need mediation; no one is allowed to ask for snacks; Rest Time.
Yesterday, that beginning part happened. The kids went to their designated rooms. Cecily was ready for a nap, conveniently, after a little milk. Justin was taking a break from his working-from-home with tv or something in the tv room. I went to my bedroom, turned on a podcast, and got out my latest crochet project. Dandy!
Less than 10 minutes later, Luke came to me. He needed to go potty. Needing the potty is the one thing that lets you exit your rest time room during rest time. Okay, go.
(I apologize if this is TMI, or if it’s violating his privacy. I am really so proud of his potty-trained-ness, and when I’m in a rational state of mind, I admit I would rather he interrupt me four times an hour than have an accident or have constipation. *sigh*)
He went #2. Back to your rest time room. I need to go potty again. #1. Back to rest time. Again with the needing to potty. Can you ask Daddy for help one of these times? But he wants to go in my bathroom. All right, then. There’s a speck in your undies, little man; I will rinse these out, you sit here till you poop again. I left him in the bathroom. I went back to my podcast and crocheting.
Too much time passed, too quietly. I went back to the bathroom to check on him…where I found him off the potty. Still pantsless. Trying to re-roll the toilet paper onto the roll, which he had unrolled. An almost-brand-new roll of toilet paper: the whole thing piled accordion-style on the floor. This hasn’t happened in weeks, maybe months.
I knew I was too mad to be fair, so without any disciplinary action other than my tone of voice, I just put him back on the toilet and instructed him not to talk to me, while I carefully re-rolled the paper to salvage it. Only the bottom 5 or 6 squares actually touched the floor. This was a perfectly good roll of high-quality toilet paper, the kind that we choose to get from Amazon on “subscribe and save” in 3-month doses, and which I fortunately had needed in February, back before toilet paper became the object of youtube viral “fighting over stuff” content, when it was still unquestionably in stock. Considering the current market, it was worth my full five minutes to carefully re-roll it for use. It got wonky if I did it quickly, so I did it slowly, marveling, all the while, at how ridiculous it was to be so upset about a roll of toilet paper; knowing, even in the moment, that I was going to turn that frustrated bathroom moment into a blog post soon, since it involved such a trendy topic.
About one third of the way through re-rolling, I sent Luke to the other bathroom to finish his business, because I could tell I was distracting him. We both finished our tasks, got cleaned up. He went back to rest time again. I sat down on my bed, pressed play on the podcast, and picked up my yarn again. And then the baby woke up.
Two weekends ago, the first one where public church services were banned, and we couldn’t go to our church, but instead live-streamed the service through Facebook on our tv, I’d had a rough morning. Cecily had been biting me, we were already off-routine and feeling that (gosh, that makes me sound awfully slow to adapt here), and I was being pretty snippy.
Justin noticed. He played “What’s on Your Mind?” with me. I cried, and spilled all 17 layers of stress and frustration I was harboring. He hugged me. Then he announced that after the baby was fed next, he was going to take all 3 kids for a drive in the minivan.
“How long do you need? An hour? Two hours?”
“At least an hour would be great.”
My husband is amazing, perceptive, and so charitable toward me. My actions were screaming that I needed some freaking alone time—we got home from a week of visiting relatives (talking to people all day every day, and even the quiet moments were mostly spent in the same room or vehicle as the kids) and then almost immediately began social distancing—but I was too tied up in knots myself to think to ask for it, so he offered it, in his “you cannot refuse this” tone.
I got 2.5 hours of silence. I decided not to turn on a podcast or music; I turned the ringer off on my phone; I chose not to check any of my group messages for as long as I had, to be alone. I got this crochet project started. I got some reading, journaling, and prayer in. I’d almost chosen to try to take a nap, but instead decided I wanted to be fully conscious of the silence and aloneness. It was exactly what I needed.
By the time they got back home, they’d had a grand time driving to a Starbucks an hour away and getting chocolate milk from the drive-thru; and I was a hundred times more cheerful. Usually when I need a break like that I go somewhere by myself. In these weirdo times, it was nice to be left really alone for a bit instead.
Last weekend, Justin took the kids out again—for not quite as long as their previous excursion—as a preventative measure. I have a feeling (and a hope, honestly. Justin are you reading this? 😉) this may become a weekly ritual, as long as the “stay home orders” persist. Because: Can you imagine how much more insane my Thursday would have been I would have been on Thursday, if my last dose of alone time had been almost 2 weeks ago instead of only 4 days? Introvert, here. It’s a need, for my sanity, my interior peace; in turn for my household’s peacefulness.
All the craziness—external and internal—came to a head on Thursday. It was my first time crying over pandemic-induced stress. Yay.
Justin came to my rescue again on Thursday night, though. This time, after we’d gotten all 3 kids into bed and asleep, he poured me a glass of wine and told me to bake something.
Baking always cheers me up. The wine was a nice touch, too, as a “grown up” thing the kids couldn’t interrupt. Justin makes me coffee every morning, which is fantastic. But he knows to put it in an insulated cup with a lid, so I can carry it around while cleaning up from breakfast, supervising potty and get-dressed time, feeding the baby, etc., and it stays unspilled and warm, even when briefly forgotten, which happens frequently. Morning coffee isn’t a leisurely affair for me anymore. (Oh, the newlywed days.) The thin crystal of our “bordeaux” wine glasses and the translucent ruby red of the cabernet sauvignon were so welcome in contrast: pretty to behold, delicious to sip (okay so is coffee in plastic I admit), and free to be enjoyed at whatever pace I wanted.
An hour later, the second glass was even better, because I was sitting down the whole time. Also, I was now eating brownies, while watching a new season of Nailed It! It was an excellent (read: total turnaround) ending to a terrible day. Thank you, Justin.
I don’t have a moral of the story today. Just wanted to share the irony of the toilet paper incident, and ended up bragging on my thoughtful husband in the process.
Tell me in the comments: what have you been doing for self-care during “shelter in place” orders?