Solo parenting - Day 4-5

Well, as our CA couples group pointed out to me tonight over an impromptu Skype date, the Tom-less week must have ended on a good note since I haven't posted since Wednesday. I wish that were so but the tightly run machine I started at the beginning of the week has slowly been wearing down. It will make it to Saturday just fine, but thank goodness for Saturday.

We've been busy the last two days with playdates, school and final clean up before Tom comes home. One thing I remembered from pre-marital counseling (or our conversations thereafter) is that Tom likes to come home to a relatively clean house. Not in a 1950's Ward & June Cleaver kind of way, but in a "cluttered space isn't terribly relaxing" sort of way. And given that the week was relatively smooth, there wasn't much reason NOT to tidy up the disaster area that was the basement or try to unearth the island counter surface again.

So I'm not sure exactly what contributed to my minor meltdown with the boys Thursday night following our daily Daddycam. I'm not even sure it had anything to do with Tom being gone or not. Maybe our schedule was slowly getting away from me (Mon-Wed they were in PJ's, teeth brushed and stories read by the 8PM Skype date, Thu they were in PJ's with teeth brushed but no story, Fri they weren't even in PJ's yet). Maybe it was like any week where Friday (or in this case Saturday) couldn't come soon enough. Maybe the boys were tired from their playdates which contributed to Tobey's whining which danced on my last nerve. Maybe it was because I was dealing with ongoing behavioral issues alone this week with no one to sound off to. Who knows, but I blew up at Tobey (scared Eli in the process) about his not listening to directions AGAIN and had to give myself a 5-minute time out because proceeding to read a Bible story while THAT angry just seemed wrong. After apologies and setting expectations, the night finally came to a close. That was probably the low point of the week.

Today, our last full day alone went fairly normally, with me trying to squeeze in a little bit more Jane Austen before Tom comes back along with a little motivation on my part to tidy up so that Tom doesn't feel like he's coming home to chaos. All in all, the week wasn't chaos at all. I prepared ahead of time what I could. I kept errand running to a minimum and me time to a maximum. The boys were fairly normal, no moping or weird emotions or acting out. I tried to stay strong for the boys whenever they or I felt scared and I also gave them lots of extra love and kisses knowing I needed to make up for Tom. Like I once said after one of our 12 hour drives to Pittsburgh: "Whew! We made it! But let's not do that again any time soon."

See you soon, Tom!