This morning as I was driving home from dropping the kids off at school I found myself lost in thought as so often happens in those quiet moments between the bustle and hustle of every day. It’s been a fun, easy-going, minimal rules, lots of screen time kind of week with travel, vacation, and a virus sharing enveloping the family. For the past four or five days, I’ve been pretending that I’m fine, I can keep the vacation moving along, nurse the sick children, take care of the sick husband, wake up at 4:45 am on the day we travel home and get everyone in bed at 12:45 am the next day. The burning in my eyes is just allergies (yes I know the world outside is frozen and I’m totally delusional). I’m going to drink these two full glasses of EmergenC and that will not only ensure I don’t get sick but will undo the virus that I know deep down I have not succeeded in avoiding.
It’s Monday morning. I’ve made sure that everyone is fever free and feeling good enough to make it through the day. The house is a complete disaster zone, I have work to catch up on and new work to do, my coat snaps need to be re-sewn on, I haven’t seen the inside of my gym for g-d knows how long, and I want to finish sewing Henry’s Spring coat.
Usually, my approach is to keep powering through like I have been for the last several days and pretend I’m totally healthy. Usually, I’m a really quick learner, but as I’m driving home from school I realise that I always power through, I feel crappy for sometimes weeks on end and then in the end I always get sick. After winning all those battles, I lose the war! Obviously, my strategy doesn’t work. Why has it taken me so long? So today, I decide to stop fighting. I go home and grab a blanket and curl up on the couch with the clicker.
I doze off a little and then wake up to a commercial about potty training and the app for that. That’s what brings me to the “app”ily ever after part. I love apps. I have plenty of photography apps, calendar apps, contact apps, and social media apps. For the children we’ve got games galore, reading buddies and more. I know as parents we all know this, but just because there’s an app for it doesn’t mean its actually going to make our job any easier. The toddler in the commercial is totally adorable and has the cutest giggle, but the idea of my nice iPhone or iPad hanging out in the bathroom with my little one just doesn’t make sense. My kids don’t do well with any kind of reward chart, but I just can’t see a toddler being that excited about the reward chart on the screen either. As with anything, I’m sure it works for some and not for others. Luckily most apps like that are free and it’s not a big deal to download and delete.
I guess the moral of these stories are:
Good parenting is all about trial and error and not giving up.
Sometimes giving in is not giving up. (and on that note I’m going to try to take another nap.)
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