I hate this game, this ‘hide and go seek’ game.  I didn’t start hating it until my daughters tried it out when I had suffered through a day at the office, then was tortured for hours by rush hour traffic.  I walked in to day care to pick them up and ‘SURPRISE!!!’, they’re hiding.  Oh joy!  That’s the last thing I wanted to do at this point of the day.  I propose a different greeting.  Perhaps a ‘Hi Momma! We have all of our homework done, will make dinner for you, clean up the mess, then treat you to a foot massage!’ 

No.  Of course not.  It’s more akin to ‘Hey, let’s see how mad Momma can get when all she wants to do is go home and cry!’

This week I have off of work for Thanksgiving.  So, the girls are a bit more rambunctious and creative than usual.  This evening they made footprints out of paper, lined them down the hallway, and asked me to search for them. 

Okay. 

I followed the pieces of paper, amazed at the amount of work they put in to coloring these things, and happy about the money I invested in their eighteen cases of Crayola markers.  I pretended not to know where they were, and then faked a heart attack when they jumped out of their closets.

Today, and only today, I like Hide-And-Seek.

When I head back to work next week, it’s a different story.

Today I decided to take my youngest daughter ice-skating at the mall while her sister was at choir practice.  She was thrilled, to say the least.  Both girls adore ice skating even though there’s no natural ice within 1,000 miles from here in Houston.  We stopped at a pretzel stand where we indulged in some low-calorie, dripping with oil, salted pretzel with fake cheese sauce.  Yum! 

Afterwards, she skipped to the skating rink , babbling happily while I put on her skates, then she daintily tip-toed onto the ice, finally  shuffled over the huge precipice, er, step, and then down onto the gleaming, Zamboni-smoothed ice.  She carefully merged into the ice-skating traffic grinning the entire time.  I watched from the side for a while, waved as she scooted by, and became incensed when a young man was hanging on the side, talking to a young girl, blocking Eva’s progress.  I was about to give him an earful as he ignored my 6-year-old pleading with her eyes for him to move.  Luckily, one of the ice-skating attendants offered her his hand so she could skate around, then she zoomed back to the wall to hold on.  I went upstairs to watch from there while she made me dizzy with her circles.  I started to realize the dizziness was coming in waves, along with groans from my stomach.  Apparently that healthy pretzel I had indulged in wasn’t playing fair with my innards.  I asked a woman where the nearest restroom was then sprinted to it, knocking down pregnant women and old men to get there.  I reached the bathroom and being that it’s for women, there was a long line.  I tried to think of anything but my gurgling mid-section and prayed that whoever was ahead of me wasn’t in the same predicament.  I made it to a stall without embarrassing myself, but I was stuck in there for an eternity. 

What went through my head was the fact that my 6-year-old was alone, 100 yards away, in a mall skating rink.  Worrying about Eva made my stomach cramp up worse, so I hoped and prayed for the best. 

I raced back afterwards and noticed a crowd of police just aft of the skating rink, my heart leapt in my chest, then I noticed they were just snacking on other wholesome food court nourishment.  The Zamboni was once again cleaning the ice, so the skaters were seated at the back waiting to re-conquer that slippery surface.  I scanned the crowd for my daughter’s pink jacket. I spied a pink coat lying over the wall but no daughter nearby.  My heart, and stomach, cramped again as I was walking more quickly in search for her, fearing for the worst.  I had made a complete tour of the rink when out of the corner of my eye I saw a dejected girl seated on the floor wearing her socks.  Eva!!!  As I came over she says brightly ‘Hi Momma!  I hit my leg with my skate and now have a big bo-bo!”  She seemed proud of her badge of honor, and I gratefully hugged her and put on her shoes. 

Another day, another stressful situation.

Sooooo, it’s been an obscene amount of time since my last post. But, quite honestly, it’s been an obscenely difficult stretch in our household. Again — Mae’s health.

Long story short, the kid had 5 ear infections in two months. FIVE! She had about five healthy, antibiotic-free days in two months. I kid you not. Doctors say that kids are candidates for tubes if they’ve had three infections in four months (I think). Uh, yeah. I got yer candidate right here.

So, yesterday, she got tubes and it’s like we have a different kid at home already!  She ate more yesterday AFTER surgery than she typically does in two full days. So, hopefully, she is on the mend.

I should say, hopefully we are ALL on the mend. Because, as any mother knows, if you have a sick kid, it throws everything off. We’ve had a sick kid for two months straight. Some of the repercussions of that reality include: sleep deprivation, inability to take her to daycare, less time for me to work, less money, financial stress, higher medical bills, concern concern concern over her health, constant vigilance for her pain, a pharmacy in our kitchen, inability to do anything on the weekends because she’s always sick or will get sick, annoyed big sisters, worn out parents…

We feel like we’ve been staring at our feet for two months straight, willing them to keep moving slowly forward.

And the irony (or perhaps my karma coming back to git me) is that Delaney and Allie never had a single ear infection between them. So, of course, I was one of those moms who 1) didn’t understand and appreciate the HELL of ear infections and 2) felt a little snobby about my kids’ relative health. Uh, yeah. I guess I got mine, eh?

So, Mae already appears to be turning a corner and I’m like a horse out of a chute! I’m so excited to spend time with her when she’s giggly and attentive and pain-free! Today, we’re going to read books, dance, roll around on the floor, build stuff just to knock it down and, of course, go to Target for the hell of it.

YAY!