The Queen's Rambles

I knew nights without Mike would suck, and I was not “disappointed.” Last night took the term “sucky” to a whole new level.

Of course the kids didn’t want to go to bed. Of course Erik did not want to give up a single moment of mommy time so mommy could help Elsa go to sleep. Of course Elsa did not want mommy anywhere near her, but SOMEBODY had to do the routine. I don’t have a pet parrot to walk her through her paces “Polly do a puzzle! Polly do a puzzle!”

Eventually all three of us sat on her floor and did her puzzles. I turned on the 80’s music, she crawled in to bed and aggressively shut her eyes and eventually fell to sleep while I put Erik to bed.

The fun really began around 10:30. She started coughing, despite having Vicks on her feet. She was crying and snotty, so I did what my mama instincts told me to do and tried to lovingly comfort her with gentle hands and words. My brain knew this wouldn’t work, but I just wanted to snuggle my poor, sick baby.

She smacked me, screamed at me, and pinched me. “No no no NO NO NO no no no NO NO NO no no no NO NO NO” was all I heard for a good 15 minutes. Eventually I decided that I couldn’t love her to sleep, so left the room. All was quiet for ten minutes, then I heard her pittering pattering feetsies in the hall way. She came into my room, looking for daddy. She crawled into my bed, determined that I was hiding her daddy. She looked everywhere, but he wasn’t there. Round two of screaming NO NO NO NO NO NO NO began. If I went near her she was a wild animal. Snot and tears were streaming down her face. She was so tired that she was like a little weeble wobble, listing from side to side as she shouted no. I was sure she was going to fall over backwards and land asleep.

Eventually I carried her to her own bed and she instantly fell asleep. After all that screaming and carrying on I’m sure she was tired. I know I was.

All was well until 1:30 am, when the coughing started again. She came into my room, yelled at me a little, went back to her bed, then I guess decided I was better than nothing and came in to snuggle with me. She couldn’t seem to quit coughing, poor thing, so I gave the Vicks another try. This time it worked and there was no more coughing.

She’s still asleep, a good hour past her usual wake-up time. Maybe I should go crawl in with her. Today is her parent’s day out program–my four hours of freedom!–but that is obviously not happening. They’d send her and her snotty nose straight home, I’m sure (and they’d be right to do so).

To top all this fun stuff off, I couldn’t find Erik this morning. His bed was empty. The downstairs was completely empty, basement was cold and dark with no TV on. I was in full blown panic mode. I grabbed the phone and was going to call 911 after making one more sweep of the upstairs, but I couldn’t imagine where he was. Our townhouse is tiny!

The little turkey had decided his room was cold and Elsa’s room was cozy, so he was hidden deep in her pile of blankets and pillows. I am glad he revealed himself because I never would have looked there. I would have had police officers here trying to calm this hysterical mother. How embarrassing would that have been? I suppose any police officer in the world would rather have the kid crawl out from a pile of covers than deal with a real kidnapping.