Younger me, home alone: "False fire alarms are the worst!"
Pregnant me at 3am: "False fire alarms are the WORST!"
Mom me, 10 minutes after putting E to bed: "FALSE FIRE ALARMS ARE THE WORST!!!"
Poor Bubba had just settled down, but hadn't quite fallen asleep (if he was asleep, he'd probably sleep through it), when our fire alarm went off. I'm not sure why- it squawked twice and then immediately shut off. But it was enough to FREAK. HIM. OUT.
It breaks my heart when he's scared by something like that. There's nothing I can do to explain to him what's going on or help him understand. All I can do is hold him and try to make him feel safe.
It's the thing I hate the most about this phase of parenting. When he was younger, most of his crying had a solution. Now, it doesn't always. Sometimes he's hurt himself and all I can do it hold him until the pain fades. The other day he was crying because he was hungry and tired and couldn't decide which one he wanted first, and I had to wait until he decided. I couldn't do it for him.
I know that the older he gets, the more his life is going to be filled with problems that don't have easy answers. Things I can't fix. I only hope that I'll be strong enough to teach him the skills he'll need, and then be able to step back and let him deal with them on his own.
Recently we’ve been hitting our stride a bit. And I was feeling a bit confident. So I told Tom he should take a night away, and get a bit of rest. He had some vacation days he needed to use, and I was pretty sure I could survive getting the kids to and from daycare without him.
Sure it involved solo bedtime with all three, and getting them all off to school the next day, but it was feeling doable. So off Tom went.