I have spent much of the last week feeling like I am holding my breath, all in knots.  It’s the week that I have been dreading since the dates fell into place, the week that both Woo and Willy had surgery.  I am a worrier by nature, so to surgeries meant it hit me doubly hard this time.  By Thursday, the day before Woo’s surgery, I was a grumpy and overtired mess. 

Woo was getting a tooth pulled.  One of his molars was fused to the jawbone and had not erupted.  This was starting to cause him some discomfort, and could lead to big issues with jaw development moving forward, so it needed to come out.  I know it’s a pretty routine surgery, but I was still anxious.  It was such a nice and comforting surprise to see one of my good friends in the waiting room when we arrived at the surgery centre on Friday. Her daughter was having surgery right before Woo, and even though she was feeling many of the same things that I was feeling, her presence both calmed me and distracted me. Still, one of the hardest things that I have had to do was hold Woo as they put him under, then be directed to walk away, leaving him so small and vulnerable on the operating table.  I might have shed a tear or two.

Thankfully the surgery was fast and uneventful.  By the time that Willy arrived from walking Goose to school, they were calling me back to sit and cuddle him in recovery.  We were able to take him home shortly after, and he spent the day lounging on the couch, spoiled rotten.  He amazed me in his ability to bounce back.  He never once complained of pain, and dove right into his normal routine, heading to the park to play soccer on Saturday morning.

We were allowed a brief sigh of relief before we started to prep for Willy’s surgery today.  He had a stapedectomy, an operation that will hopefully restore the hearing in his right ear.  He had this operation performed on his left ear in early 2009, and although he is very sensitive to loud noises now, he can thankfully hear in that ear again.  We have been looking forward to this operation, as his hearing loss has been frustrating for both of us.  There are risks associated with the procedure, so I worry still.

Today was a long day for me.  I had barely slept, was awakened in the middle of the night, and then I had to get the lils to school and Willy to the hospital.  The majority of my day was spent worrying about Willy, so I was very relieved to be called about an hour earlier than expected to come and pick him up. He is now upstairs, sleeping peacefully, as he will be for the next few days.  I still have to make it through the next week, trying to ensure that he gets the rest that he needs and that the lils don’t hurt him or drive us all crazy as they try to be calm and quiet.

Right now they all sleep peacefully, so I close my eyes and slowly exhale.

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The last couple of weeks have been a bit of an eye opener for me as the mom of two lils in kindergarten. For the majority of the school year, I thought that I was doing pretty well. The lils made it to school most days before the bell, they are often overly prepared for the weather, and I hadn’t yet forgotten to include their lunches OR water bottles. Sure, I likely drive them more often then I should, and I have forgotten to call the school once or twice when one of them is sick, but all in all it’s not been too bad.

There has been a subtle shift of late, and I think that things are starting to slide. It started when I forgot to buy splash pants for Goose, and then didn’t find any for weeks. It started getting warm, and overly prepared for the weather morphed into sending the poor girl in her snowsuit up until mid-April, when the temperature was well above freezing and she was over-heating. Then the lils started competing to see who could reach me for hugs at the end of the day. The “winner” got their hug first, and the loser, well, lost it. The tears, the yelling, the crying, have become a daily occurrence. Their teachers look at me, confused as I am as to what is happening. Then I sent Goose to school in a dress that clearly needed something worn underneath it. It was a knit dress, and their were holes in the pattern. I thought that she was fine with nothing underneath, but I was so wrong, and those holes looked so large as she ran around the playground at pick-up.

I have been able to volunteer a few days a month in the lils’ classroom. It is great to see the them interacting with their peers, to get to know their classmates, and to help the teachers out a little bit. I like it, I know that the teachers appreciate it, and all of the lils seem to have fun when a parent comes in. Sadly, the last few visits I have made have ended with one or both of my lils behaving really badly. They don’t listen, disrupt the lessons, and try to get their classmates to follow them in their mischievous ways. The teachers know it is for my benefit, the lils have been warned that they can’t keep it up or there will be consequences, yet it continues. When Willy picked the lils up from school one night recently, he was told that I should not come in the next day, as it becomes too disruptive for all. The consequences they were warned of.

I’ll be allowed to come back in next month, but until then, I’ve been suspended from kindergarten.

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Woo talking. Goose, “Hey! I was about to talk and Woo started talking first. That’s interrupting!”

Me, “There was no kale in today’s veggie basket.”
Woo, “What???? Why not!?  Can you go get some now?!” (addict much?)

Goose accidentally pulls the curtain rod down in her room, at bedtime. She still has a blind, so I figure she will be fine. When I leave the room and turn the lights out she says, “Hey! Why is it so bright in here? I can’t sleep when it is this bright out!”

Tucking Woo in to bed one night, “Your breath smells like wine.” (that might have been a valid compliant)

One night this week the lils were presented with a nice steak, usually a family favourite in our mostly vegetarian house.  Goose took one look and cried, “But we haven’t had KD in a million days!”

Each night I call the lils to supper, reminding them to use soap.  Tonight Goose refused, angrily complaining, “I don’t need to use SOAP to wash my hands.”

When his milk was about to be poured into the same plain, low profile, bottom heavy, hard to spill glass that he uses every night, Woo cried out, “WAIT! I can’t drink my milk unless it’s in a fancy glass…”

Walking to school last week, Goose asked what the date was.  I told her, and she exclaimed, “AWW, I don’t have any APRIL underwear!”  The people who were jogging by at this exact moment found this to be particularly amusing.

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As the afternoon went on yesterday, I went about my routine as I always do.  I wanted the lils to see normal, even though I was not feeling it on the inside.  They didn’t need to know that I was upset, so I fed them their snack and talked about their day as I prepped the veggies for our stir fry.  I listened to the radio, because we always do, but I discretely turned it off to “hear them” every time the news came on.  They didn’t need to know what was going on.

There are terrible things that happen in the world every day, and I gloss over them too.  It was just a little harder yesterday. The bombs that were set off at the finish line for the Boston Marathon were a terrible thing; impossible to avoid, to hide because of the event, the location that was attacked.   The lils aren’t ready, I rationalized.

It was the cancellation of last night’s hockey game that forced me to tell them a bit about what happened.  They knew that there was to be a game, were hoping to be allowed to watch a few minutes of the first, or be called out of bed to see a goal for the Sens if they scored.  They would realize that something was up when there was no game, and would want to know more.  As I told them that there were some explosions in Boston, and that the game was cancelled to ensure that everyone was safe, I kept thinking that this was a silly reason to be telling them about this, that they would want to know more. In the end, they were disappointed about the game, but had no real questions about anything else.  Thankfully they had one more day where they were still in that safe little bubble where all is good in the world, and their biggest worry is that they have to wait a day to do something they enjoy.  It’s days like yesterday that I want to crawl inside that bubble with them.

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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about my selfish behaviour surrounding my husband’s upcoming surgery.  What I neglected to include in that post (after two lil people, you just forget to say things sometimes), was that the surgery has been scheduled for about six weeks later, in early May. It was a date that Willy could live with, a date that assuaged my guilt a little.  It was also a date that let us think about heading out of town for a very short, adults only trip to Chicago for Wine Spectator’s Grand Tour event in early May, a trip that might not have been possible had he had the surgery been this week.

If we could pull it together, this trip would be the first time that we have left the lils for a fun, just us trip. Sure, we have left them with my siblings on two other occasions, but neither of those trips were for fun at all.  So we started to look at dates and costs, to talk about how long we could go and what we could do and see.  We started to dream. Making those plans concrete was the first item on my list for this week, seeing as it is the first time that Willy and I will be in the same country for more than a couple of days in a row this month.

Just before I left to walk the lils to school this AM, I saw a post-it on the table with Woo’s dental surgeon’s name and a phone number written on it.  One of his molars never descended, so he needs to have it extracted before it messes up his jaw and adult teeth.  It has started to bother him lately, so we are all looking forward to having the surgery (and recovery) behind us.  We were told to expect a call the week before the surgery, so I figured I would be getting pre-op instructions in the call. I called them back and was surprised to hear that the surgery had been moved to May 3rd, a full month later than planned.

I could hear the air go out of that Chicago balloon when I realized that the May 3rd was the date that we were to leave for Chicago.  Selfish me half-heartedly asked if there was a date the following week that he could have instead, even though I knew I would not make him wait even longer if there was a date available.  She let me know that it could be months if we waited, so I confirmed the date and let Willy know that we wouldn’t be going to Chicago this time.  Then it dawned on me.  Woo’s surgery is on the third.  Willy’s surgery is on the sixth.  That week is going to be all kinds of fun… Well played karma, that one selfish moment is going to come back to bite me.

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