Today my children sensed my renewed commitment to being available for them. They descended upon me like little locusts full of demands. Why is it that kids don’t see fit to space out their demands? Demands always come in clusters. Gleek wants milk at the same moment that Patches needs to potty and Link needs help finding his shoes. I have to do a quick triage to figure out which demand is the most urgent. (Note: The only thing that beats out potty on the urgent scale, is vomit. We had both today.) I then queue up demands and address them sequentially. Children are not noted for their patience. All they can see is that mommy is still not doing what they asked. So they ask again. Louder. It is a good thing I had all that renewed commitment, otherwise I would now be insane.
Despite the demand clusters and Kiki having flu, today actually went pretty well. I did a good job of partitioning my day and spending a good portion of the daylight hours in the sunlit parts of the house. Since I finished all the urgent accounting, tomorrow can be devoted to making Halloween costumes. I am sewing dresses for both of my girls. It takes lots of time, but since I enjoy sewing, everyone wins. Sewing costumes also assuages my nascent guilt about how much time I’m spending on business stuff these days. I really want my kids to be able to see me neglecting other things to work on something that is important to them. Fortunately for my schedule, Patches decided to wear Link’s old Mario costume. Link changed his mind and decided to be a ninja. Ninjas are easy, all he needs is head-to-toe black. I have until Friday to pull the costumes together because there will be a costume party Friday night.
And now, off to bed with me.