January brings tantrums, hugs and stomach bugs

I gently rubbed my daughter's back as she calmly threw the contents of her stomach up into the toilet and helped her brush her teeth again afterwards. Then I read her a book and helped her get back to sleep again.

It was but the most recent blip in the routine that we have tried so hard to re-institute in the days and weeks following the holiday season, where routine is out the window, overstimulation is the default setting for most any child under 13 and when, really, just about anything goes – especially when mom and dad are trying their hardest to just to get some rest or downtime.

So we found ourselves in January, with a little girl who had been getting too little sleep for entirely too long a period and a baby who was having trouble finding his routine in all the celebrations and long nights of socializing.

It's a tough month, and I can only imagine what it's like for parents of kids who already go to school five days a week. Mornings after the Christmas holidays must feel as long as Spielberg's A.I. (Seriously, has anyone seen that movie? It's three hours of waiting for something to happen. It's worse than watching three hours straight of Max & Ruby) while fighting with the little ones about what to wear, how much of it to wear and how long to wear it.

At least, that's the fight in our house, anyway.

My daughter favours skirts and stockings as legwear, but she doesn't seem to like stockings that are too thick (i.e., warm enough to keep out the winter chill) and she is really stubborn (like her mother and her father) and so, when we ran into this issue the first week of January, I felt like it might go on all winter.

Finally, we settled on a compromise. She can wear whatever she wants on her legs, but she must also wear snow pants, which ended up being a satisfactory compromise from her end, and which worked well for her parents.

No matter the amount of tears, though, the best part is always the reconciliatory hug afterwards – it also makes me feel guilty for thinking about selling her.

That is, until she came home with a stomach flu that had her out of sorts for two more days, and once more precluding us from getting back to our normal routine.

Finally, we just said enough is enough and spent an entire weekend day in the house, letting the kids recover from the holidays, from illnesses and from, well, everything. It had benefits for mom and dad as well, because we managed to get house pretty tidy in the process.

So, everybody wins. The kids feel better and less cranky. Mom and Dad feel better and less cranky. Great, right?

Here comes Monday.