Why I Am Actually Grateful I Got A Bad Stomach Virus and Had To Spend The Day Alone With an 18-Month-Old

I got a stomach virus on Saturday night.  I felt the anger in my stomach start to brew, so I took a handful of tums and went to bed.  In hopes of sleeping it off, I squeezed my eyes shut tight and dared not move.  However, 6:00 AM appeared and I was flinging the blankets off and heading to the bathroom.

Sparing you the details, I will just say I had to be in there about five times an hour for most of the day.  Add to that that my husband had to work and could not get anyone to cover for him and I was home alone with our 18-month-old.  

It was an interesting day.  I had to create a number of diversions to get a few minutes in the bathroom without my darling boy.  It mostly resulted in him eating copious amounts of animal crackers.  

Anyone who has had a stomach virus knows that it completely wipes you out.  Energy is gone.  Heartbeats in your head.  Zero strength.  So, I spent the day laying around watching our son.

It was the first time, maybe in his whole life, that I just watched him.  I wasn't trying to cook dinner, trying to get ready for the next day, wasn't trying to clean, wasn't even trying to watch a show, or check my email.  I just watched and I was amazed.

I laid curled on the couch while he destroyed the living room, ripping toys from the toybox, tearing clean, folded, laundry from the baskets, and dumping his snack cup crumbs onto the rug.  Our house was being completely destroyed and in my sick state, I did not follow behind cleaning up his messes, I just laid among it and watched.

My son would walk over to something, investigate it, then start to take it apart.  Upon prompting, he would put it all back exactly were it was.  Then start all over.  Then he would come stand by me for a minute to check in, then he would go repeat this cycle of destruction somewhere new.

As the day went on, he would cuddle me and watch cartoons.  He would feed me his snacks.  He would respond (in nonsense words) "I love you, too" when I told him how much I loved him.

At 11:15, I had no choice, but to give him a cup of milk and put him in his crib.  I was nearly in tears with guilt listening to him babble and jabber while I laid in bed.  Eventually we both gave in to sleep and woke no worse for the wear.  

Later, I took him out to the deck where he played with sticks and grilling tongs, while I again laid there watching.  I noticed that he would look back and check to see if I was still there and still watching him.  He would do this every few seconds and he would look at me with the most trusting look, as if to say, "I can play with this seat cushion because you are here and you are looking out for me."  

As the night came over us and illness raged on, I put him in the tub for a 40 minute bath, which is ideal because the tub is a fun place to play and it is toilet adjacent.  He played in the tub and looked at me with that look again.  He would look at me longer than adults look at each other.  We avert our eyes after a few seconds.  Especially when there is no dialogue between us.  But not children.  My son would just hold the look, really looking at me.  And I looked back at him, feeling like I had never really, really, looked at him.  Like looked into his eyes and into his person.  

By bedtime, we were nestled into a mess of blankets on the couch watching Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and feeling as connected as when he first arrived. 

I am grateful for his independence and the development of his own identity that have blossomed in the last year and half, but failed to realize how much he trusts me.  Truly trusts me.  And what stirred me the most, was realizing that this is not new.  It is the same trust he had on his first day here on the planet, but I had gotten busy and forgotten it.  Laying there too sick to be busy, I saw it and felt that reciprocal feeling come back.  That mutual love and dedication to the other, which I lost in chaos of raising a toddler who seemingly takes more from me than gives back.  I knew he loved me, but lost the feeling.  I know now that that is wrong, his love is a quiet trust and faith that mom and dad are the best, most special people on Earth, who are bottomless fountains of love and patience.  But that that couldn't be so if they weren't there watching. Returning the look that means, "Yes, you can do that because I am here to protect you, because I love you."

An Old Married Couple

This is a pregnancy and parenting blog, but for those of you who are in a relationship and you have kids, you ultimately learn that those worlds are intersecting and will become a jumbled tangle, also known as your life.  Parenting is not it's own entity.  Marriage is not it's own, either.  This is how I learned this lesson.

Over Christmas break, some lovely friends came to visit.  They stayed for several days and we enjoyed exploring our city and spending time with them.  They are couple who have been together for two years and are beautifully caught up in each other's love.  Their physical proximity never strays more than a few feet apart and they have this look of general delight at the existence of the other.  It was sweet.  

And then it hit me...I had not so much as kissed my husband that entire day! How did this happen?  How did we become...an old married couple?

My husband and I were lucky enough to meet early in life.  We were spared the journey of time and miles searching for each other.  We met in middle school.  In high school, I fell in love with him and 11 years later, I am still in love with him.  

We have been married almost four years and have a good life.  Yet, seeing our friends still falling in love, made me feel something like sadness.  I wanted it back.  I wanted the hand holding and the offering to hold doors and the long looks, and the tenderness.  I wanted it back.  

So, naturally, I tried to recreate it.  Standing close, sitting close, all of it.  You know how that went?  We tripped over each other in the kitchen, got super mad at a restaurant, and had a tearful argument when everyone else was sleeping.  It was a lot of stress and emotions and when I thought about it, it was all something I made up.  I let jealousy in and I got bit.  Even as it was happening, I knew better, but the wave continued to crash over me, until I was upside down, freaking out, and had a mouthful of sand.  I thought of all the articles and blogs that blow up my social media feeds about how women are princesses and men should do this, that and the other thing to please them.  While I don't take issue with these things inherently (a man should honor his wife), I feel that these messages teach us to be dissatisfied.  To be thinking only of ourselves.  Sure, I would love back rubs and surprise dates, but really, what I want is someone to unload the dishwasher now and then and listen to me talk about how my day was.  

I saw our friends' budding life together, and I started thinking of what I wanted and forgot about what I had- a husband who fixes everything that breaks, a husband who works insane hours for the good of our family, a person who loves me as the disheveled, perpetually exhausted, anxiety-ridden, no-make-up-wearing-self.  We may have left behind the elaborate dates, but we became a couple who works together to achieve our respective goals. We may have left behind the physical closeness we used to know, but we became a married couple who carried each other through job loss, a car accident, a cancer diagnosis, and lost family members.  We became an old married couple who loved each other so much, there was enough left over to make an entirely new human being.