Today’s been a difficult day.
Yesterday Oskar started to have fever – 39.3 ºC – and I would be less concerned if we had not been informed on Monday that one kid in Oskar’s school contracted Hand Foot Mouth Disease (HFMD). That kid is not in Oskar’s class, but all the children get together during assembly in the morning, so there was a chance that he might get it.
While we have not seen the red spots and sores, yet, high fever is a first symptom of HFMD.
Luckily Oskar has always been taking high temperature very well. Given how contagious HFMD is, however, we of course did not take him to the swim class, and we also skipped having his hair cut.
We naturally worry that he has given the disease already to Thomas. It’s difficult to keep the two apart from each other during the day, so if Oskar has it, it’s nearly certain Thomas has it, too (unless breast milk provides some protection). And there is the thing that we fly to Europe in 5 days.
Sigh.
What really made it a difficult day, however, was that both kids were not very cooperative when it came to sleeping. Thomas is normally easier, so it was already a little exhausting that he wouldn’t fall and stay asleep as he normally does. Lamia was working on him and I was with Oskar.
And Oskar worked my buttons so much today that I nearly blew a fuse. Seriously! In hindsight, I am getting scared of myself.
It started all with Oskar being a pain in the neck when we tried to give him Paracetamol. It’s difficult to explain a 2-year-old why this is important, but at this age they are also quite resourceful in fighting against taking medicine. I’d love us to find a way to make him take the stuff without all that drama, but at least today we failed (sneaking it into his food only worked partly).
Then came his nap time and he did not want to sleep. That’s not unusual. But he expressed his disagreement differently today: he hit me in the face, spit at me and kicked me with his feet. All in a kinda playful way, mind you, but some of that was actually physically painful and / or uncomfortable. And today I was in no mood to take that for long. Especially because he found all of this incredibly funny and giggled madly, even when I began getting madder and were rougher on him. Like, when he tried to climb out of bed, I threw him back in versus just blocking him. Yes, this was a fun game for him. But for me it wasn’t and I came to a point where I actually even yelled (without much effect, to be frank).
To make it short: I am not proud of myself and I failed on so many levels as a parent in this situation, I still feel terrible about it. In the end he did not sleep at all, I was frustrated and angry and he was likely confused but yet ignorant of the anger curve his dad went through. As I am writing this, I am actually relieved I did not lash out, because god knows there were a few moments where I was close to really losing it.
I gotta work on myself to not be a moron and get annoyed so easily by stupid things like that. After all, if your kid doesn’t have the afternoon nap, they might be little, cranky terrors in the evening, but it’s not the end of the world. They always sleep, eventually.
Whatever important thing I want to do can wait.
It’s not as important anyway…
