I Survived...Barely

It's official, I've survived a weekend of solo parenting and have lived to tell about our adventures.

I had all of these grand plans - completely decorate for Kate's birthday, work on a few home projects I wanted done before her party, go to the grocery, clean up, have a lovely dinner ready and waiting for Alex when he returned.

Basically I was crazy to think that my weekend would go anything like that.

CRAZY.

Friday morning Will woke up with his first cold.  He was pitiful and looked like this almost all day.

Kate capitalized on the fact that her brother was requiring more attention than normal and decided that it would be the perfect day to insist on wearing a "rella" shirt, a random hat, and have a pants strike.  She knew there was no was I was fighting her eccentric fashion sense.

I was so occupied with trying to keep Will comfortable and not screaming that I totally forgot about the current war on pants when I put her down for her nap.  Let's just say she woke up, she took her diaper off and we had a lovely code brown situation.

Along with the "pants are evil" stance, Kate also decided to have a sleeping was overrated as well.  I wasn't about to chance having her wake Will up while she was screaming in her crib so like an awesome parent I let her stay up to do educational activities put her on the couch with the iPad so I could attempt to clean the kitchen up/ wash bottles/ eat something.  She finally gave in at 10:30 but Will was up nearly every hour throughout the night. I was beat by Saturday morning.

Needless to say, when I got a text from Alex with this picture:

I told him to shove it to have a wonderful day running around New Orleans in a red dress.

Saturday was a bit better but Will was still so pitiful.  If this picture doesn't make your heart hurt then nothing will.  I think he sneezed a million times that day. Poor bubba.

After early naps for everyone, including this momma, we did make it out of the house to run a few errands. I treated Kate to a Chick-fil-a milkshake since she was being so well behaved! I felt so bad that she wasn't getting nearly enough attention but, there was only one of me and Will was just miserable which meant his needs came first.  Just typing that out makes my heart hurt. I hate that there isn't enough of me to give them both my undivided attention all day, every day.

Saturday afternoon Kate insisted on having an egg hunt.  And so we did just that!  I pulled down one of her Easter baskets and we had at least 4 eggs hunts that afternoon.  Who cares that Easter was 4 months ago? Not us!  And yes, clothes are optional for August egg hunts in this house.

I did manage to map out my gallery wall while Will took a nap!  Kate loved "helping" with the giant "stickers" I kept moving all over the wall!

And when Kate wasn't helping, she was decorating the bathtub with qtips...

Saturday was another long night with Will but thankfully Alex was able to catch an earlier flight and was home to offer sweet relief by noon!  And? He took off Monday and let me sleep in until 10! It was magical!

So, while I didn't accomplish anything I hoped to, I did manage to keep both of my children alive, relatively happy, fed, and didn't {completely} lose my mind!

But I will say...it will be a LONG time before I am up for another weekend of solo parenting!