Shit!

So today has started out with a great big "how in the world am I going to do this?". Last night at midnight I woke up with that feeling in my stomach...the one that tells you you're going to be throwing up all night so you might as well get up and start getting it over with. Sure enough, I got food poisoning. So bad that I had to wake up Ajay and have him take over Amelie's night duty even though he had to go in for a 24 hour shift first thing in the morning. Yeah...let's just say a rough start to the day all around at our household.

The good thing is that it was definitely food poisoning and not some contagious virus that could have put my girls in danger. I woke up feeling better if not a little inside out. But as with Ajay , it's not like you get to call in sick as a Mom...the show must go on.

This morning Ajay's Mom is sadly absent...she spent her night with friends in a nearby city. My sister is in town visiting, thank God, but all in all, this is the least amount of hands-on help I've had since the baby was born...me and my sister (who absolutely loves her nieces, but with no kids of her own, is a little apprehensive when it comes to the amount of chaos around here).

Alia of course woke up a little turned around...missing her dad and grandmother. Although we told her "Daddy's at work" she continued looking for him for the first hour she was awake. Talk about heartbreaking. From here she went into a behavioral tailspin. Since she's used to going for a stroll with her Grandmother every morning, I thought it might be a good idea to take her out of the house to keep her schedule regular and provide her with a clean break from her obsession with finding Ajay in the house. I'll just pack Amelie in the Ergo baby and push Alia in the stroller and head out for a nice walk. Good plan, right? Wrong!

Once we were on the walk, I realized to my dismay that I don't do the walk as well as Grandma does. Alia has several (20 or so) stops on her walk where certain things need to happen. You have to stop and look at the berries on a certain tree. You have to visit the Koi pond at a certain neighbors house. You have to knock on certain street signs. Stop at the cement dog. Let her tap her feet on certain rocks, find worms in irrigation runoff...you get the idea. If you haven't done this walk with Grandma, you're set up for failure. And I haven't done this walk with Grandma in 4 weeks...so a lot has evolved.

Right out of the gate, I missed something. Alia shrieked as I continued on past something that I was supposed to show her---still don't know what it was. Around the next corner I missed something else...this time the shrieking turned to real tears. "Mommy! You're doing it all wrong!" was the clear message. This continued for the remainder of the walk, and by the time we got home, both girls were crying. It was probably the lowest point I've had as a Mom in awhile. I'm the Mom. I'm supposed to know how to take them for walks. But in my post all-nighter with my toilet, I just barely made it through calming them both down before the thoughts came...How am I going to make it through today? Or this year?