Every day seems to have its own flow of ups and downs. Sometimes the monotony makes those peaks and valleys seem somewhat flat, other days, they feel like like Mount Everest and the Grand Canyon.
Monday was one of those days. Everyone started out the day pretty cheery, if maybe a little on the tired side. We had a busy morning all around on the productivity side of things. In the early afternoon, Amelia even started work on a blog post that she hopes to finish this week. (Stay tuned…)
So that was all well and good, but by the time the afternoon hit, I was dragging pretty badly.
The kids were all over the map, it seemed. They were upbeat and playing or watching a movie one minute, and at each other’s throats the next. And while Henry was down for his nap, Amelia was sniping with me over a number of items of complaint (most notably why we can’t have delivery pizza every night), and it eventually exploded into her shouting, “I’m so sick of this house!”
If you’re imagining that being the kind of thing you’d expect a teenage to yell, that is correct. Quick note: Amelia is 6 and a half.
But seriously, this was hard, and my hunch is this is a conversation that is happening in a lot of houses all over the place. I understand where she is coming from, and it breaks my heart that I can’t just take her out to do something fun. And what’s worse, trying to explain this to a 6-year-old and ask for patience from someone who has already been so strong through all of this is incredibly difficult.
Amelia got pretty emotional and so did I. We fought over all kinds of ground. She was even super upset that we couldn’t go to the local pool, which by the way is not closed because of the virus. It’s closed because it’s an outdoor pool, it’s April, and there’s about two inches of snow on the ground.
It’s super hard to feel so helpless and to know that being cooped up and limited in what we can do is a problem I can’t solve for or with her. Emotions eventually settled down and she spent some nice cuddle time with her mom, and Henry hung out with me for a while, and by night’s end everyone was feeling better.
It was a pretty early night for everyone. High emotions are pretty exhausting, as it turns out. Nothing like a good night’s sleep and some weird, warped quarantine dreams. Amelia reported dreaming she ate at Papa John’s and rode home on a dinosaur. Top that.
