Tonight, I was going to write about how the hardest part of homeschooling has been never being away from my kids. I sat down to write, with a cup of coffee on the desk and Babypie in my lap. I thought it was out of her reach, and it wasn’t. Hot coffee splashed all over the desk and all down her body. Thankfully, I always put two ice cubes in my coffee, because I’m too impatient for it to cool off enough to drink it quickly, so she wasn’t badly burned. We put a cool cloth on it and then I used the trick my mother learned for burns, which works so well, putting soy sauce on it.
I’ve suspected Babypie might have an allergy or intolerance to wheat, because she’ll sometimes get a little rash on her face when she eats a nibble of bread. Well, when I put the soy sauce on her burn, the burn turned into hives. Yes, the first ingredient in Kikkoman soy sauce, after water, isn’t soy. It’s wheat. I spent the next 20 minutes alternating cool water, refrigerated aloe vera, and hydrocortisone cream on her burn/rash, feeling like the world’s worst mother. We gave her some Benadryl. She was happy as a clam after we got her calmed down, and carried on like normal until she sacked out a few minutes ago. I’m wallowing in guilt and worry at the moment, because my baby isn’t well and I’m tired of her not being well, and I’m wondering what all I could or should have done to prevent it. Plus, I let her spill coffee all over herself. Freaking awesome mom, right?
Now I’m thinking about what I was going to write. It’s true, I don’t have much time away from my children. I have almost no alone time or “me” time. Honestly, though, it doesn’t bother me as much as it could. I’m a fearful person, much more so since Babypie was born and I developed post-partum anxiety for the second time. Homeschooling gives me an excuse to stay close to home and gives me a stronger sense of protecting them. My kids are where I can watch over them. When I send The Tank to school, I get anxious any time the phone rings, worrying it’s a call that something has happened to him, or he’s sick and I’m not there. I worry about them any time they stay anywhere else other than my mom’s house. Not sending them off for eight hours a day is, on the whole, a relief, not a burden.
I do get a little stir crazy and wish the noise and pawing at me and neediness would just back off for a few minutes so I could think (or tinkle) in peace. Sometimes I claim I want a vacation from my kid. On the whole, though, I am much happier having them here than anywhere else. I don’t want to be rid of them or “free” of them. I didn’t have them to pawn them off on someone else. I didn’t have them because I wanted to have lots of “me” time. I could have stopped at one or two and been at a point where they would be out of the house for the better part of the day, but that isn’t what would make me happy.
