When you need your mama

My poor kids. They've been hit so bad with this blasted stomach bug and it's just taken a toll on them. They still don't want to eat much and poor Abby chucked again today after playing too hard. I called the doctor and it turns out that it's quite normal to have once a day puking for up to a week. It just breaks my heart when they don't understand why this is happening to them. They can't go anywhere. Play-dates are out of course. We have an invisible bio-hazard sign on our door. Heck. Even my mom is avoiding us like the plague. She dropped off two dozen of farm eggs the other day and dropped them at the door and ran away holding her breath. I can't blame anyone. No one needs this yuck in their systems. So with zero outside time and never leaving the home, Alex and Abby are constantly on the verge of brutally beating one another. Alright. They are two and four so that might be a bit exaggerated. But here's the deal, the whiner they get, the more they seem to need one thing. Me. Let me start by saying that at moments, I feel like I won't even get the chance to pull my hair out because it will have given up on me and fallen out all on its own. Cleaning up vomit daily seems to wear thin on a person. I've been chucked on three times now. Three! That's three more times than I prefer. So when they both are crying at my ankles, I have a difficult time not disappearing into solitude while laughing hysterically and twitching uncontrollably.

Let me paint you a picture. Abby in full melt down mode after feeling a bit queasy is dripping tears and snot down her chapped cheeks and sucking on her calloused thumb while screaming for mommy and only mommy. Josh has generously given Alex a bath while I try to calm Abby down. But then poor Alex falls down in the tub and busts his knee after quite possibly inhaling soapy water on a day where he wants nothing more than to go visit Grandma and Grandpa but can't understand why we can't at the moment. He, too, is now working his tear ducts to the full limit and snot is dripping out of his nose at an uncontrollable rate. Oh, and did I mention he refused to get dressed after the bath so is obviously butt-naked? Guess who he wants? Mama. As I sit there holding my two crying children on my lap (one still naked), I realized something. The reason they are crying isn't because of the craziness of cabin fever. It's because they've felt my stress and are now mirroring it. I finally convinced Alex to get dressed. I took them both into my bedroom, pulled them up onto my lap with their blankets, sang to them like I always used to so long ago, and rocked them. As they quietly sat in my lap with their warm little heads on my chest and their sweet little faces grinning up at me, I couldn't help but smile. Alex whispered to me in a tired voice how he remembered when I always used to rock him to sleep and sing him songs. Abby grinned through the thumb in her mouth and asked for the same exact songs I used to hum on a nightly basis while rocking them. As annoyed with them and as frustrated I get with motherhood, I tell you this. I didn't want to get up when they fell asleep there on that creaky, old rocking chair. For the first time in a while, I felt good.

Tomorrow is a new day. No impatience. No rubbing my temples. No screaming in my head. Tomorrow is going to be a better day. Because I think my kids are trying to tell me something. Sometimes...you just need your mama.