Slowing It Down For The Sake Of My Sons

My friend Susan doesn’t call me “Crazy Lady Nicole” without good reason. I am insane. I lead a jam packed existence and I like it that way. I thrive on challenge. I crave challenge at work, and the challenge of fitting in time with friends, family, community commitments, a body drenching work out, learning a new skill, meeting new people. You name it I want to give it a try. Relaxing makes me too uptight! I will sleep when I’m dead!

And then a funny thing happened over winter break. My sons had something like seventeen days off in a row from elementary school. And I was a teency bit freaked because finding coverage for that much time seemed nearly impossible. But after looking at our schedules, my husband and I decided we could actually cover this time ourselves. It was the first time since maternity leave that my boys would be spending so much time with us. And it would be just us because not only was school shut down but all of their extracurricular activities were on hiatus. I was looking forward to it like it was a fascinating Corning social experiment – we’d either love each other or hate each other by the end of break.

And like most best laid plans, mine kind of fell apart as I ended up getting strep throat smack dab I the middle of the great Corning Family experiment. Which meant not only was I not going to work but I wasn’t going anywhere – and neither were the kids. So for several days we just kind of hung out: napping, reading, watching tv. There was about a solid week of forced non-activity. And something really weird happened when our family did nothing. We actually relaxed. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, since relaxing makes me too uptight I started to lose my mind a little bit. I came dangerously close to adopting a nine pound stray Chihuahua mix I found online. Oh, then I thought maybe I needed to have another baby. Because that makes sense. Thank God my girlfriend Dara told me to have a glass of wine and a good nights sleep and I’d be over it by the next day. Which thankfully totally worked. Although I’m pretty sure my husband I still convinced he could be coming home to a third stray rescue dog or a positive pregnancy test any day now. But truly I’m over both the dog and the baby.

But while I went a little cuckoo, my boys actually enjoyed the relaxed and lethargic version of me. They liked hanging out and doing pretty much what they wanted to when they wanted to. Oh the freedom of being schedule-less! In fact there were a few days we simply skipped giving my oldest his ADHD meds. I may have just been too damned sick to remember to give it to him, but quite frankly he also didn’t drive me crazy enough to get out of bed and give him a pill.

And that is what kicked me in the gut. What more conclusive evidence do I need to realize that my children need me to relax. I am insane. I can’t just lay around. But it’s not all about me anymore, now is it? I have these great kids who need me to take it down a notch…or two…or three. And I need to honor that. Starting now.

If you like my blog you’ll love my book. Buy The Working Mommy’s Manual on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Working-Mommys-Manual-Nicole-Corning/dp/0615637418/ref=cm_sw_em_r_dp_6ZRcqb0QFT7P8_tt