Sometimes it is the little things that can get your through the day as a parent. That extra cup of coffee in the morning. When your toddler suddenly takes a solid nap in the afternoon. Mail that arrives free of any bills. Dinner where the food was all cooked “just right” and tastes great. Find that one, extra, last cookie after the kids have gone to bed.
Sometimes despite your best efforts nothing goes right. There are days where everything seems to be conspiring against you. Then there are days that aren’t necessarily bad, but just… there. These days take up the bulk of parenting.
Errands. The sniffles. Getting the kids to school. 2 loads of laundry before lunch. These are just some of the things that take place all the time but don’t get blogged about.
Last night at some late/early hour Xavier woke up coughing. It was horrible. Poor little guy looked pathetic. He simply couldn’t stop. We took him into the bathroom, ran a hot shower and sat with him, letting the steam help loosen him up. I set up a vaporizer in his room and after about 30 minutes or so of comforting and medicating him Laura put him back down. This morning he didn’t go to school.
We went to the store this morning, picked up a few things for dinner, as well as cough medicine. It’s all mundane ordinary stuff, right down to where and when the medicine spilled. Nothing bad, nothing good, just ordinary life. Little moments that don’t normally make it into a blog because they simply don’t stick out.
So much of parenting is in those “in between” moments, how we deal with our kids in between activities.