Wednesday, August 18, 2010

About A Boy

School starts next Monday, Kiddo's birthday is next Thursday, his "party" is this Saturday and I am coming off a 3 session week last week.

ummmmm....

Poor Kiddo. His birthday is going to suck.

Sometimes I feel like such a failure as a mom.  While other kids get parties with friends and decorations and gifts I give my child a last-minute, totally unplanned "get together" with maybe one or 2 friends and his grandparents. Instead of toys I ask people to buy him clothes for school.

He's only going to be 6 for crying out loud.

I haven't planned for any decorations, or games, or fun stuff. There will be no bouncy houses or water slides - we will all be stuffed in our little house together, tripping over each other and praying the a/c can keep the temperature a balmy 80 degrees...which it probably won't.

And I know he will love having his grandparents here - he loves them.  But I know he wants to have a bunch of friends over too. We just don't have the room. And with the temps outside in the 100-105 range all week, it is too hot to go to a playground or even out in the back yard. We can't afford to go somewhere else with a roof and air conditioning.

It's the last week before he starts school - forever - and all I've done is a whole lot of nothing. Suddenly I am looking back at this summer - I didn't even take him to the pool, not once. I took him to the splash park right after it opened several months ago. That was only one time too.

I suck.

I feel like I have wasted his freedom.  I keep thinking about how deserted places will be once school starts (just like I like it) and how I can take the boys places when all the other kids go back to school, and then I realize that Kiddo will be one of those kids. I wasted the whole summer waiting and now he will not be able to go anywhere.

This week has been about doctor's appointments and paperwork and schedules and phone calls. He got a shot on Monday for a vaccine he missed when he was 2.  Today we had to go up to the school to talk to the nurse about his epi-pens and allergy protocol and then after I took him to have his blood drawn for the allergy testing. I called the lab first to make sure they were comfortable doing pediatric blood draws and they assured me that "the guy" there was recommended by several doctors in the area just for that purpose.  So we go there and "the guy" is actually running the whole lab which is full of people.  He also happens to be "the guy" that, 3 years ago, tore up Kiddo's arms looking for veins and finally sent us to a pediatric specialty lab over in Round Rock. The lady we got that was to draw his blood stabbed him in the left arm and missed the vein, and then proceeded to DIG around looking for another while he screamed. He was fine with the initial stick - the digging set him off and I couldn't get him to calm down. She finally tried in the other arm and thankfully found the vein on the first try. He was so shaken by the initial stick in the other arm that he cried the whole time.

After all that drama I took the boys to Sonic for lunch and ice cream even though it was only 10:30. When we pulled into the parking lot Kiddo got a nose bleed like none I have ever seen. I guess the trauma and stress from the blood draw was too much for his little body to handle - his nose gushed for 10 minutes. I had to have him lay down on the floor of the van because I couldn't hold back the flow with just napkins.  We ordered our food and came home and had a picnic in the floor of the living room. The boys thought that was great.

So at least we had some fun today. heh

Maybe it's a good thing he is going to school.  He'll actually get out of the house and get to do fun stuff for once in his life. lol!

pathetic

Until,
D :)

1 comment:

TitanKT said...

Dawn, you've had a long, stressful week and you're being too hard on yourself. I can relate to how you feel, I carry around my own full set of guilt-ridden luggage because I failed to provide a family for my son and we can never afford ANYthing. Ever. Until the end of time. But there are so many things that are so much more important than big birthday parties and there's still time for those anyway.

I know you sometimes need to just vent about how you're feeling, but I do want to remind you that you're a great mom, you're not pathetic, nor do you suck.

I'm sorry you had such a bad experience with the blood draw. I took M to the doctor today (sinus infection) and for a moment, we thought he might have to get a shot and he got hysterical. Sounds like Kiddo is pretty brave, but you're pretty strong, too. I'm not sure a phelbotomist who DUG around in my kids' arm would have lived through that experience. That makes me mad just thinking about it.

(((HUGS)))