I Had A Bad Day: Sympathy Welcome

I’ve had such a bad day today. Not only was the work day bad but the fact that I can’t go out tonight to release the pressure that builds inside you when you have a bad day is, well, very bad. So I’m blogging about it. Without a picture. Just so you get how bad it really was.

Here’s how my day started. I woke up at 5:45 to take in a one year old as a favour to the mom (I did this once two weeks ago and today was the last time). I usually get out of bed at 7:45 for a workday start at 8:00 (I do daycare so all I do is roll out of bed, get dressed and brush my hair and teeth – yes you can be envious if you want. It’s a perk.). However, cutting two hours out of my sleep time after suffering insomnia for about a month is not conducive to a fun day.

As soon as I hear the car roll into the driveway my 2 year old wakes up. We bed share and she sleeps lightly without me. I run upstairs to give her a power nurse hoping she’ll fall asleep again. But she won’t. She doesn’t want to get up but there’s no way she’s going to sleep without me. Last time I did the early start time she slept until 7:15. No such luck today. I have no choice but to pick her up and bring her downstairs where the mom, who is running late, is waiting for me. 

Last time this little guy came over at 6:00 he was McHappy Baby. I can’t say I related, but it made things much easier as I half zonked out on the couch while he quietly and happily played at my feet. But today, he pulled a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. McHappy Baby was now McCranky Pants, about to wake up the rest of my household. Finally I was able to calm him down by donning a lion puppet and talking to him in a funny voice. Score one for me. All the while my darling daughter nursed on my lap, wrapped in her favorite blankie. 

“Go back to sleep,” I urged her for over an hour. No such luck. 

The day went on with me dragging my butt through the motions of daycare. I couldn’t wait until my oldest daughter went to kindergarden so I could put all the kids down for naps. An hour before naptime it was evident that my youngest and the one year old wouldn’t make it to the regular naptime. Luckily my husband was able to drive my other daughter to school so I could put the little ones to sleep. The one year old went down no problem, but my two year old? I think she sprouted red horns where her ears should be. She nursed for an hour, in bed, in the dark, but she would not – could not fall asleep. At this point I was ready to shoot myself in the head. The other two kids I was caring for went to bed and my daughter went to school. I went on twitter for awhile and read some blog posts but the screen blurred in front of me. Finally, I told my two year old that I was going to have a nap. She wandered into the guest room with me and while I lay in bed just trying to relax (I have never and will never sleep when there are other people’s children around) she played with the dials on the clock radio and then disappeared and started clacking away on the computer keyboard in the adjacent room. And then she picked up the cordless phone and began pushing more buttons. Half of me didn’t care. “Let her call Mongolia,” I thought. I don’t care. I half-heartedly Magic 1-2-3′ed her and that worked for a minute but then she did something different. At first it was quiet and I thought she’d found a toy, but then I realized she was in one of the other bedrooms! She had woken up one of the other kids (there were three of them). Forty-five minutes early! To top it off he had wet the bed.

Forty-five minutes later I woke up the one year old. The other two year old was still sleeping. Deeply. It was past when he should’ve been woken up but at this point I was thankful for small blessings.

We went downstairs for snack. Gear up for more bad times. Spilled yogurt on the floor, apple juice being purposely squirted on the table, screaming, refusal of offered snack to my child which when my back was turned was eaten by the cat, and finally an eruption from yours truly who threw the rice pudding across the kitchen where it landed on the window sill and of course, made a huge mess. My kindergardener who was home at this point surprised me by choosing to give me some space instead of yelling about it.

And then, just to top it off, the one year old’s mom was an hour later than I expected her, and the two year old’s dad came to pick him up early. He was still sleeping. I didn’t get in trouble, but guess who peed the other bed?

And guess who still hasn’t slept? And who’s getting crankier and crankier by the minute but who for right now is being drugged by cartoon images? And tonight is girl’s night. I don’t think I’ll be going though because my husband has his Green Community meeting at which he is one of the Board of Directors. Plus I’m too tired anyway. And my two year old would never make it. Oh yeah, and I have laundry to do tonight. Lots and lots of laundry.

Have you ever had a day like this? Where it seems nothing else could happen to make it worse but something does? Please say yes and tell me what you do to cope.

Okay, okay. I feel a little better now, so now I’ll list a couple things I’m thankful for.

• I’m thankful for my blog for giving me the space to vent my feelings and my readers who are always appropriately sympathetic. Sympathy works for me. I like virtual shoulders.
• I’m thankful that I don’t always have to get up at 5:45 and that I have the boundaries not to do it for daycare again.
• I’m thankful that my last daycare child was picked up an hour earlier today making my workday a 9 1/2 hour day instead of a 10 1/2 hour day.

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Tags: bad day, bed-sharing, insomnia