I thought I was going to kill him. It started with me not really sleeping well last night. I kept thinking about work. I find that so frustrating when it’s work that keeps me awake at night. They get at least 40 hours of my week every week, and I get angry when I give up any more to them. When I wasn’t tossing and turning over that, I thought about August and his potential eye surgery. When I wasn’t thinking about that, I was thinking about Brent and his new job. Needless to say, it was mostly a sleepless night. You can usually tell when I haven’t slept well, because my side of the covers are a mess – if I’ve slept they are pretty neat looking, as if I hadn’t moved at all.
This morning, I got up, went to work, and then was coming right back home to take care of August after his nap. I got home at 1pm, and August woke up at 1:45pm. My eyes were heavy with exhaustion, but I needed to muster up the energy to spend the next 5.5 hours with August. We decided we were going to “take a walk” and go to the Academy of Sciences. We got halfway down the sidewalk when August thought it would be a good idea to run off down the street. I stopped him immediately and explained to him why he couldn’t do that. And he did it again. (Did I mention he’s turning two soon?) After the second time, I explained to him if he did it one more time he would have to go in the stroller. Off he went. I picked him up, while he kicked, screamed and formed a plank with his body so stiff that I wasn’t sure I would be able to get him in the stroller. After pining down his arms, and holding his hips down I finally got him strapped in. He cried the whole way to the Academy.
Then we get to the Academy, and all was pretty much fine. He was a bit demanding, “walk it”, “up”, “down”, “read pout pout fish”, etc, but I kept reminding him to say “please” and we got through it. Then at 4:45pm (the Academy closes at 5pm) August decided it was time to go. As we walk out the door, he remembers that he hadn’t seen the Penguins, and runs back in. At which point someone who worked there told me they were not allowing re-entries at this point. I had to pick August back up, before seeing the Penguins, and leave. Needless to say he was not pleased. Again, we went through the same stroller process, but this time he was screaming “penguins” instead of “get down”. I won’t bore you with the rest of the afternoon. To sum up though, we took a short walk around the baseball field, August got pinned underneath a sign covering a pothole, and he cried the whole way home. Once we got home he screamed about making him a grilled cheese, and about needing to hear some jazz music. At this point, I don’t know who this child was, but I was hoping there had been some kind of mistake. Mine must have got swapped during the nap or something, and I just had to deal with this child until mine got returned.
Finally, I finished cooking his grilled cheese and sat him down for dinner. The house was finally quiet. For the first time since 1:05pm, my world got peaceful. August sat there at the table and ate, while we blissfully remained silent. Typically we chat throughout dinner, but I think we were both so shocked from our afternoon we didn’t know what to say to each other. Suddenly, August broke the silence. He turned to me and said, “I’m sorry”. I have never heard these words from him. I said, “What did you say? Did you say, I’m sorry?”. He said, “Yeah”. I said, “Thank you, I’m sorry too”. I’m not sure if August was really apologizing for our afternoon, or if it was just coincidental conversation. After that our evening was back to normal. We had a bath, read some stories, and cleaned up a bit before going to bed. August was back, and I’m fairly sure we were both happy about that.
