Peaceful Easy Feeling

Another workday home with a feverish kid.  One of the toughest things about being in a two-working parent household is convincing folks that kids actually do get sick this much.  Yes, truly I need to be out this often for doctor’s appointments, dentist, eyeglasses, fevers, tummy bugs, broken pinkies, and the like.  I promise I am not a lazy slacker – this job is important to me – I just have no one else to do this!  (Or I should say, we just have no one else – the Prof and I split these hiccups fifty-fifty and even THEN it’s a ridiculous amount of flex time needed to deal with it all.)

All the same – my deadlines next week are not so pressing.  I’ve a bit of a breather early next week, and so working from home today is less stressful than it would have been last week.  And I get some dedicated couch time with the middle kid, which is nice.   He’s the most stoic sick one, and thus the easiest to work alongside.  (He looked really peaked about the eyes yesterday, worryingly unwell, but today he’s perky enough, even with a mild temp, to try to convince me we need to go to the aquarium.  Um, no fever baby – you can lay on this couch and OD on terrible cartoons and Gatorade, and that’ll have to do.)  I can also start the crock pot and keep the laundry moving.  Multi tasking FTW.

It’s moderately thunder stormy outside – peaceful thunderstormy, not an anxiety-inducing raging storm.  I got an amazing amount of sleep yesterday and last night, which does wonders for the mood, so even in the absence of bright sunshine I’m feeling sunshiney today.  Although this terrible Pokemon tv show in the background somewhat rattles the nerves, it is soothing to be near my little ones when they’re sick.  (Now he has abandoned the aquarium requests and is campaigning for Chick fil A.)

I recall that he was born the day after a stormy day like this.  I had been unable to sleep due to breathlessness for a month, and was still staggering in each day to work at my internship, almost hallucinating due to lack of sleep.  My workday ended, and I took a streetcar home through crashing lightning and an absolute gale.  No one gave up their seat on the busy car, and I stood up, 38 weeks pregnant and gigantic, for the forty minute ride to my stop. The streetcar dropped me off and I staggered home, soaked in an instant, and opened the front door to a poor sick toddler – Jack, taken down by a tummy bug, and Prof. trying to clean the couch cushions.  Liam was born less than 24 hours later.

I told him this story today.  He asked me sweet questions and I answered them.  Hard to believe that I had a kid Craig’s age and a newborn too, in my second year of law school no less.  It was hectic and difficult.  It’s still hectic and difficult.  Someday it’ll get easier, right?