It has been a rough few weeks.  The adjustment to preschool has shaken every area of our daily routine and things are just now beginning to fall back into place.  Probably from the dozens of runny noses at school, both boys picked up something fierce.  Lucas had a full blown flu with temperatures reaching 106° and Bertram took him to the ER very early last Saturday morning.  It was thankfully a much calmer (and quicker) experience than our last trip to the ER in NYC.  He was gone and back in an hour, it was free, and he didn’t have to wait for a single second to be treated.  Eliot maintained a constant cold throughout but luckily never got whatever Lucas had.  Through it all, I didn’t leave the apartment in four full days.

Aside from the sickness, the adjustment to preschool has turned naps and nighttime into a battleground.  At first it threw me off, I didn’t expect it, I thought maybe they were beginning to be ready to drop their nap altogether, and I also didn’t know how to handle the opposition, maybe they weren’t really tired?  What I have realized over the past week and a half is that they are afraid of separation and that doesn’t stop at preschool, they are also afraid of the moments we separate within the house.  Preschool just brought that out.  Whatever the reason though, I was really beginning to lack patience.  There was so much whining and fatigue here that I was really dragging myself through the days, half able to think clearly.  It has been nearly a month and not a good one and I have loads of patience but I saw it finally wear thin enough not to recognize myself.

And then I broke my pinky toe.  Running for the phone, I slammed it full force into the door frame and went straight down in total agony.  I agonized and cried and eventually hoped that it just hurt more than was really injured because what was I going to do if I couldn’t walk?  I tried to minimize it and walk on it and pretend that it wasn’t the size of my big toe and turning purple, but it was.  I explained it to the boys once I had calmed down a bit, “mommy probably just broke her toe, that’s why she was rolling around on the floor yelping… so please let’s just have a nice quiet afternoon with as few demands as you can muster.”  ”Mama, toe broke.  Mama, mo doot (juice).  Mama cook.  Mama moomies (movies), mama sam (sam means “I want to watch the wiggles”) mama mo cookie….  So many demands flow from their small vocabularies in one day.

The x-ray did in fact show that the toe was broken and the doctor said it would be about 15 days of pain and limping.  lovely.  Thankfully, I think it is actually starting to feel a bit better a little earlier than predicted.  I even wore a shoe today, but I am so tired of limping.

Upon realizing what was going on in the minds of the little boys, I have been able to react to them more appropriately and with more found patience than before.  Things are settling down now and although Eliot still wakes up every night and wants to get into my bed (and wake me up at 5:30am to read stories and make breakfast) I can now respond to him in a way that is productive instead of frustrated.

I never knew that preschool would open up such a can of worms, and for so long.  I expected something, I don’t really know what, but not total chaos.  Last week I would have said that it wasn’t worth it, that I’d have preferred not doing any of this.  But this week, today, I can see things taking shape again and I can see how wonderful it is for them to have the separation from me, and I already knew how wonderful it would be for me.  I came to pick them up from school this morning and they were playing so well and were so engaged and when they saw me they were happy and not desperate at all.  And then they took their nap.