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Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Rainy Days

I'm doing something unusual right now in the sense that I'm writing while both girls are in the room with me. It's been a tough day and I'm hoping right now that when it ends, I'll feel energized by the fact that we managed to have a good day. We don't have any real problems at the moment, no horrific stomach flus or injuries that would make today a really tough day. Just the typical, nasty rainy day blues.

Elena has been sick for over a month now. I don't know if it's one cold that will never leave her or a series of cold, one right after the other but Eliza has nicknamed her "Run Run." She's had an ocean of snot in various colors draining from her nose since late February. Two doctor visits and a 10 day antibiotic have helped, but not eliminated the problem. Throughout much of this, she has maintained her sunny disposition so that's helped me maintain my sanity.

Today she is protesting more than usual but right now she's calm and enjoying playing with Eliza's magic markers. Eliza and I did an arts and crafts project today, making ducks, flowers and Easter baskets from cut-out pieces of construction paper. The six ducks are now taped to the window over their blue construction paper pond. This little art project managed to keep Eliza pretty happy for close to two hours now. And the happiness continues for the moment as she happily names her little ducks "Sarah, Lara, Vonn and Tina." The poor little baby ducks are not only legless but apparently not worthy of names either but they don't seem to mind.

The playroom is a mess and Eliza just tramped on something and now screams like she's enduring an injection.

"I have to clean up this messy room," she screeches, then promptly sits down. Now she's back on her feet marching and the room remains a mess. I could push it, yes, but you should have heard the tongue lashing I got when I asked her to take her plate from the table to the counter. She spewed forth everything from "I don't wanna" to "You don't like me" to "I'm not a very nice girl." Never mind the fact that I tell her it would be very nice of her to clean up her plate, she'd much rather cry and hop on the poor self-esteem bandwagon by wallowing in the bad self-image that comes with selfishness instead of performing a simple act that might correct this poor picture of herself. Sometimes it's not worth the fight but I do find it interesting how early they learn to manipulate by claiming to feel unloved in order to get out of helping around the house.

It's 12:40 now so I'm less than halfway through this day that started with Eliza's bloody nose. As the baby cried, I stripped the bed and I have to say Eliza was very good about cleaning up her face and the bathroom door. I'd just gotten her bedding blood-free and back on her bed when I scooped Elena out of her crib and realized she'd apparently crapped during her nap. And oh yeah, that Huggie leaked.

So laundry machine's going (thank goodness I have one after 15 years of living in New York City and laundromats) Eliza just tossed a stuffed bear wearing an "I heart Israel" sweater at me and Elena tries to write on a plastic storage bin with a twistable crayon. It's all good here, right now, I swear. Tonight when I sit down to watch "Lost" that show better be worthy of the day I survived. It better be the best television episode that ever was, the kind of TV to rival "Who Shot JR" that people talk about for years to come.

But it won't be. Oh well.

2 comments:

John said...

Hi midlife mama, just reading your blog re your daughter, if she is still not well please (if you wish) let me have her name and I will put her on my healing list.

peace and love

John

John said...

Hi midlife mama, just reading your blog re your daughter, if she is still not well please (if you wish) let me have her name and I will put her on my healing list.

peace and love

John