Thursday, March 18, 2010

unruffled

There are yet more germs afoot in our house. The Captain started coughing a week ago and it's slowly snowballed into an ear infection for Sir O. In the past 45 days our family has all been healthy for 8 days total.
On the one hand, we are tired; boy howdy are we tired! The sleep deprivation that comes with sick kids is not good for my marriage. Mr Renn and I are about a million times more likely to snap at each other after a night pocked with interruptions.
On the other hand, I'm getting enough practice at this thing, that I'm reaching that point where I don't get upset and feel like life is unfair over every miserable day or poor night's sleep anymore. This morning, after spending 45 minutes on the phone trying to get through to the pediatrician's office, I needed to hurry and get us all ready (HA!) in order to get to our appointment. Only there was no running water, naturally. The brutal timing of this would have really gotten under my skin a few years (maybe even months) ago, but today I was unruffled. I was flexible. I made it work.

sick day

I managed to dress and groom my boys even though they both behaved as if I was trying to stick them with a hot poker, and it didn't phase me. I drove through poorly organized construction traffic both to and from the doctor's office and it didn't even occur to me to get upset about it. I calmed Sir O down even though he was terrified of the doctor (who was not his regular doctor), and I held the Captain (pinned him, actually) for a wretched 5-8 minutes for his first nebulizer treatment, then I calmly took Sir O to the bathroom and dealt with the fact that he had started to pee his pants. I maneuvered the double-wide stroller through multiple doors with embarrassing difficulty, and drove to the pharmacy to deal with inevitable prescription/insurance complications. I did it all without even once feeling like it wasn't fair, or shouldn't be happening to me, or was too hard, or was hard at all, really.

sick day

CLEARLY I am making some progress!

So, if I've learned my lesson now, can we PLEASE all be healthy?

10 comments:

Aby Runyan said...

See? It DOES get easier! OK, so it's not ACTUALLY easier - you just get better at mentally handling it all.
If I had known THEN what I know NOW. I could have saved myself a LOT of mental angst!

luvs, aby

Kermit~the~Frog said...

Sadly, you can't all be healthy now. After you do this 100 times without losing your cool, you'll realize "healthy" itself is relative.

You're 100x more calm than I am, though, and I've got four who rarely need the doctor at all.

Stina said...

I hope it does get easier...and everyone gets healthy, but if not...I know you can do it :-) You are amazing!

aLi said...

Progress!!! It is AWESOME being able to see it and reward yourself (whatever your reward may be). I agree with Aby's comment. Mental angst needs to be brushed aside. Learning how to do it, though, well, takes experience. :)

hairyshoefairy said...

I'm impressed with the way you handled your hard day. I think it shows a great deal of maturity.

Amber said...

Way to go! I'm exhausted just reading it. I need to try harder to count my trials as blessings.

Cam said...

Mosiah 24:15
:)

The Perry family said...

I feel your pain, as far as the sickness of your children! And way to go you! It feels good to make progress!

The Perry family said...

I was doing some catching up on your blog and I had to tell you that I love the interpretations and experiences shared about the "Proclamation".
I also have to say that I really miss Sir O. I watched the video of him painting and he is just so cute and has grown up so much!!!

--jeff * said...

way to be most excellent, em. : )

i also like the captain's camo shirt and your photography is looking quite nice.

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