SNAFU

This weekend was one big mess. Saturday was one of the worst days I've had in parenting (and I've had a few). Landon cried 95% of the time he was awake and only slept for one hour all day. After exhausting all his toys, I took a picture to see if the flash would distract him and make the tears stop for 5 seconds. It didn't work:

I cuddled and sang and read books and made barking/quacking noises and rocked and reminded myself many, many times that he was a full little person, just like me, and something was bothering him and he couldn't tell me what it was, and making him feel better, not making the noise stop, was my goal. The latter could have been accomplished by putting him in his crib, closing the door, and taking a 3-hour shower, the former could not. I call this "reframing the problem" and I "reframed" about every 15 minutes. It was a hard day.

Fortunately he slept well that night; unfortunately, I didn't. It took me nearly two hours to fall asleep (stress from school is really starting to affect me) and then spent the hours of 3-4 AM listening to a very loud fight outside our building, which made me feel very safe, lying all alone in my bedroom with a door leading directly outside to the alley where this was taking place. I woke up exhausted and comforted myself with the fact that JP would be arriving at 8:30, but of course that didn't happen as planned either. After going straight from the 6th street clubs to the airport, he found out his 6:00 AM direct flight was delayed, then delayed more, then boarded, then canceled, then he was put on a flight to Dallas, which was delayed, then he finally got to Dallas, then to Chicago, and then sat on the runway for 30 minutes, and then finally - 7 hours after he was supposed to, he arrived home. (The same thing happened on his way out, except throw in an additional delay in the layover they added to his itinerary and some lost luggage which they forced him to check because the plane was full... I hate air travel.)

Landon was delighted to have his daddy back and was so good that JP wondered if I had been exaggerating the previous day's events. We had a date night planned to use up a gift card I've had since Landon was born. I think we would have rather gone to bed, but friends had offered to watch Landon and this was the last possible day for us to use the gift card before we move. So we went to the beautiful restaurant, ordered the cheapest things on the menu to keep the bill at or around the $75 balance, and ate the biggest and best piece of chocolate cake I have ever had (and I've had lots!). I got to hear all about JP's trip, which was wonderful- he got to see about 20 old teammates who are now scattered all over the place, and we relaxed and flirted and forgot we were the proud parents of a possessed 10 month old. When the bill came ($88, so only $13 for us!) we handed over our gift card and the waiter said: "we don't accept those." WHAT?! On the back of the card it says go to www.website.com, and I did, and this restaurant was listed. He said "we haven't been associated with them for two years and have repeatedly requested to be pulled off the site." I was not. happy. We sighed, paid the bill we would never have gone to the place to get, and went home. I called the restaurant's parent company this morning and complained to three different people until I was told to send in the card with a letter and they will consider refunding me the card amount.

This morning I spent about 3 hours on the phone trying to get various administrative things done for the move, graduation, Landon, etc. I then actually starting crying talking to a friend about how much school work I have to do. Despite the occasionally dramatic way I talk about school in the blog, this is the first time it has brought me to tears. I usually deal with stress well, but my papers are due in two weeks, I'm exhausted, and I'm a good month behind in all three of my classes. I know that grades don't matter and I really don't care about them, but even getting a paper to the point of existence takes more effort than I feel I can give. I'm more overwhelmed than I've felt in a very long time, maybe ever, and it sucks to spend my last few weeks in Chicago like this.

But because it also sucks to end on a note this whiny and depressing, here is a super cute picture of the transformed, post-daddy's return home, picture of the little diaper model:

As I say anywhere from 5 - 1,000 times a day: "It's a good thing he's cute!"