Hard

Sometimes it's just hard.

Hard being a mom, hard being a wife, hard being an employee, hard just being.

There's so much to do, so little time, so much in the way of emotions, stress, pulling, pushing every which way.

It's like you try as hard as you can, but sometimes you just feel like it's not enough?

I dropped the little three off at the J today for vacation days. Elisha, Shana, and Jacob are on vacation FOR THE NEXT TWO WEEKS for the Sukkos holiday. Dovi, bless his soul, only had off Tuesday and Wednesday of this week and the same next week. But the terrific trio? Off until a week from Monday. And you know what? That's hard.

I'm one of the few of my friends who work. And when they're in school, everything's humming along nicely, it's fine. But when there is vacation, especially gratuitous, pointless vacation (next Thursday and Friday are for nothing. Sukkos is OVER. Why? Why? How am I going to do this childcare thing?) it positively, absolutely, sucks. There is no worse feeling in the world than trying to pawn your kids off for a few days so you can go to crappy work. I have no idea how the majority of my friends do not work. Yet they do not, so it's not a problem for them. But all I can think about right now is who will watch them Monday, Thursday, and Friday of next week. I'd much rather it be me.

But it certainly did suck when as I dropped them off at the J, I realized that I was confused about vacation days. As in I thought it was this Thursday, this Friday, and next Monday. When in actuality it was THIS PAST Monday, this Thursday, and this Friday. So in other words, not only is there no child care for next Thursday and Friday, there is none for Monday either.

And never mind the fact that I'm missing so much work for the holidays, and I don't get paid on my days off. So my income this month will basically be negative after I pay for whatever childcare I manage to scrounge up.

But for whatever reason, I'm a working mama, and such is life. So I've gotta stop the pity party and move along.


I'll move along to my happy Dovi, when he met a Camp Simcha Special counselor this morning at his speech therapist's house. Her son is home for the holidays, and he brought a friend. Who was a counselor at camp. He didn't really know Dovi at all because he was with the older kids. But Dovi saw the sweatshirt the guy was wearing and went nuts-jumping around, hyper as all get go. I guess that's what camp does to him.

If only it would help the gigantic, enormous canker sores in his mouth heal. D got a few new brackets put on last week. The addition of new brackets in his mouth means the addition of a few new canker sores for a few weeks. Until his mouth adjusts-remember, he doesn't feel pain. He doesn't feel the new brackets rubbing his little lips raw as anything. Yes, wax helps-sometimes. Since he doesn't feel it, he doesn't baby the sore at all. So he doesn't baby the wax at all. So it generally comes off within ten minutes. But we try. And it gives him disgusting, repulsive breath. For the first time ever, I'm actually excited about all the grooming they work on at Keshet. I told the staff to do EXTRA tooth brushing! I complain about time spent on grooming (yes, it's exactly what it sounds like) and now I'm asking for more!

Most kids get the entire upper set of braces put on in one visit, then the entire lower set put on in another. Dovi? Four brackets his first visit, two his second. Two. I'm not joking. It takes FOREVER and a day to get them on. He cries and screams. Moves his head. First, they need to clean out the junk on his teeth, rinse him out, and then they can glue on the brace(s). But rinsing Dovi's mouth is an endeavor in and of itself.

You see, kids with FD aspirate all liquids. So shooting water into his mouth while he's screaming makes me..umm...a little stressed. In a perfect world he cannot handle liquid in his mouth. But when he's stressed and yelling it's ten times worse. You know that little flap-I believe it's called the epiglottis? The thing that when you drink covers your windpipe to your lungs and when you talk covers your esophagus? Dovi's doesn't work. at all. I've explained it a million times to them but I still don't think they 100% understand that water into Dovi's mouth = water into Dovi's lungs. It's a simple equation. And water into Dovi's lungs can = pneumonia. Sometimes. Not always. But it can happen. So that rinse part before the braces application? Highly stressful for me. I try and sip my coffee and pretend it's not occurring. So far that's worked.

My great hope is that Dovi will have a full mouth of braces by the time he's 12. And I'm not joking. It's madness.