On my own

I take care of my kids each and every day. I love it, I wouldn't trade it for the world, but I will admit it is trying at time and at the end of the day when daddy gets home to help share in the responsibility I relish that time and get a few minutes where I am not the only one in charge. It is a good feeling no matter how short lived it is until tomorrow.

This last weekend Carl was asked to be the godfather for some good friends of ours in Chicago. In the interest of saving money I just sent Carl on this trip and stayed home with the kids. This trip has been planned for a couple months now. In addition, Carl started a new job a couple months ago that is keeping him busy. A couple weeks ago, he realized right after this trip to Chicago he had to leave for a four-day Las Vegas work trip with only one day inbetween to give me a break. To say he felt guilty was an understatement, he is a good dad, but sometimes there is no guilt involved you have to do what needs to be done.

I am trying to stay strong and in time like this I would usually keep busy with all of our friends and family and that was the plan for the weekend. As luck would have it, Erik started coming down with a cold right before Carl left on his trip and then Elliot got sick on Sunday so we have been stuck at home with colds and not able to distract ourselves with friends and entertainment.

So I am going a little loony here stuck at home with two winey kids and trying to provide them with entertainment. I don't like my children watching tv, more than 30-60 minutes a day. At most they watch 2 hours a day, but since I am strict on that it leaves me with lots of time to fill.

So here is how we spent the weekend. On Saturday Elliot wasn't sick and Erik was starting to have breathing problems so he was no longer snotty. We had two birthday parties planned for that day, but sick kids stopped that in its tracks. I decided a quick trip to the park was in order just to burn off some energy and be around other kids.

Right after the park we met uncle Glenn and Aunt Annie for some dim sum and to say good-bye to cousin Laurie since he is leaving to Taiwan this week. I didn't take pictures because it is too crazy to control both my kids close to nap time and take pictures. We did take a few outside the restaurant, but it was on someone else's camera.

That night Erik had, what I learned was an asthma attack. He has always had breathing treatments when he is sick and we use the nebulizer every couple of hours on him. This particular night the nebulizer wasn't working and my poor little guy could barely breath. There is nothing worse than being a mother and watching your child suffer and be helpless about it. In the middle of the night I am not the most patient person either. On that particular night Erik was up every hour hysterical so I got very little sleep. Unfortunately on Sunday we had plans to travel down to Orange County and see my good friend Christine and her son Enzo. With now, two sick kids, we had to cancel and find other ways to entertain ourselves.

Since Erik was having breathing problems the night before going out in public was no longer an issue and I am not sure I could have done with without a nap. So that morning we stayed home being sick and just cuddled for hours. That afternoon Erik was ready to join in the world again so we decided to drop by his Aunt and Uncle's house to see if they were home and look at their Christmas tree. I am very lucky that my brother only lives 2 miles from my house and loves for us to just surprise visit.

We caught him hanging the lights on his house. It was about to rain so he did it very quickly, but the boys still found it fascinating and were happy to be away from the house.

They invited us to stay for diner and we ordered pizza so my SIL could actually eat a gluten product without feeling guilty about it. Elliot is getting to the stage where is trying on our shoes. So he was walking around the house putting on my shoe. Absolutely adorable!

Uncle Glenn even started a fire for us in the fireplace and Erik was complete fascinated by the process, but careful not to get too close.

Then daddy came home for one day and was off again. On Tuesday morning I knew the boys were grumpy because they were sick and they barely got to see daddy so I decided an excursion to our favorite baseball field would be a perfect place. They could run to burn off energy, but not contaminate other kids because they were both super snotty. I totally forgot about the rain on Sunday and that would mean puddles at the baseball field. I was unprepared with changes of clothes or wipes, but there was little I could do to stop this from happening. So I just let go and let them have fun with it. (pictures taken with my iPhone)