All The Single Mommies

As I've mentioned before, S is an academic. I'm a lapsed academic. He is an assistant professor who loves what he does, whereas I got my Ph.D. because I came to hate my cubicle job and Yale was willing to give me money to read, write, study languages and travel abroad. My point is, S is one of those academics who publishes steadily and attends conferences regularly, not just because he has to, but because he likes it. There is one conference in particular that is a huge annual gathering of everyone in the field, and it is held in a different American city each spring. He is there right now, and has been away on the East Coast since last Wednesday. He does not return until this Friday. That means that I will have been a single parent to a two-year-old for TEN DAYS STRAIGHT. 

I know, ten days is nothing when you think about all the single parents who do this for years and years. But when you're used to having someone share in all the logistics of making a household run and in helping with the childcare, and that person disappears for a week and a half, it means suddenly having to figure out a new system with no back up. Obviously I've been alone with O before, but this is the longest stretch and this is the first time he's at an age where he can be difficult. I think if I spoke to almost any other parent of a 2.5-year-old kid, they would think that O is incredibly easy and laid-back. But you have to understand how much easier and more laid-back he used to be! He is now doing totally normal-for-this-age things like trying to get his way and having screaming tantrums, etc. Needless to say, I was very nervous about how things would go.

Overall, though, it's been pretty great. (I'm probably jinxing myself by writing that when it's only Tuesday.) Yes, it's harder because now I have to do absolutely everything by myself: the cooking, grocery shopping, laundry, dishes, garbage, cleaning, playing and entertaining, diapers, bath time, bedtime routine, getting up if O wakes up crying in the middle of the night, dealing with tantrums and discipline. But fortunately he's at school now, which means I can get a lot done during the day. A couple of days before S left, O had been throwing fits about having to take a bath (S always gives him a bath when he's home) and I was terrified that I'd have to let him go ten days without bathing because he wouldn't let me get him into the tub. I mean, if S was having a hard time, what was I going to do? Our first night alone was tough (I heard at least one "Daddy do it," to which I had to respond that Daddy wasn't there--gulp), but after the first couple of days we both got used to the new routine. (I even managed to survive the news on Thursday that Owen was BITTEN by another child at preschool. He still has the teeth marks on his face, but seems to have forgotten it even happened.)

Even the weekend was good. I had wondered how that would go since those are the days when O gets to spend tons of time with his dad, and I also wondered how hard it would be without school taking up a huge chunk of the day. It actually turned out really well, though. I made us French toast with strawberries for breakfast (I'm trying to start a tradition of one cooked breakfast on the weekend, at least twice a month.) We went to a park in the morning, which was very crowded despite the icy conditions, and ran into twins from O's preschool who were there with their dad. It was funny because I was trying to follow along in Swedish at first but as soon as the dad remembered who O was (at first he thought his name was Noah, who's another kid in the class), he immediately switched into English with no acknowledgment of the fact that he'd just been speaking a completely different language. And on the walk home we ran into another dad and his daughter whom we'd met at open preschool back in the day. It was the first time I ever felt as though our neighborhood was, well, like a neighborhood, where you actually run into people you know. Sunday was more boring. Our big expedition was to the supermarket, but I think it's fun for O because child-centric Sweden has mini-shopping carts for children to push so he was pushing his around the store and helping me put things in it. He's really good about it and wasn't trying to intentionally ram into shelves or people or treating it like a toy. Otherwise we just hung out at home. 

It's funny how quickly I went from dreading this whole experience and kind of hating it at the beginning to enjoying the time with O and getting to do whatever I want. (Example: S is not a fan of O pushing the mini-shopping cart because he thinks it slows everything down too much. Sigh. Another example: I'm eating way more pasta and junk food than normal.) Don't get me wrong; we are looking forward to having S back at the end of the week. But it's given me confidence that this is something I can do and that I don't need to freak out before the next long conference.