All Together Again

My husband is back in town after skiing with my best friend and her family and some other friends.  He’s been gone a week and before that I was gone for five days with my best friend and some girlfriends in Cancun.   We’re remembering what it’s like to have two parents in the house to do all the things that need to be done in a day.   It’s nice to be back together again.

My children were very excited to see their father.  My son was particularly excited because he wanted to play Fortnite together and to have dad help him level up on the new “season” of Fortnite that was released while he was out of town.

It’s interesting when you’re solo parenting how things change in your mind.   You’d think things get harder because you’re the only parent on the job the entire day but it turns out to be the opposite.  You get in the grove of things, expecting to be the only one the children can come to with things they need, want or need refereed.   It’s almost easier in a way.   I can’t explain it, but I’m a calmer parent when I know there’s no one there to back me up and I have to go it alone.

The children have been quite good for both of us.  Mornings went smoothly and the evening routine wasn’t more challenging than it would have normally been.   Everyone in our family does well when someone leaves; we don’t bemoan that one parent or child is missing and how we’re missing them so badly, but we do talk about how we’re excited for dad to come home in two days.  

My son reminded me this morning that dad was coming home today.   He was happy about it, but not concerned.   It’s nice that they don’t have separation anxiety over it.   For me, I messaged my husband the day after he left and said I sort of missed knowing he was in the basement, playing Fortnite or watching a movie (his end of day routine) while I lay in bed doing things on my iPad (my end of day routine).   He said he’d felt similar when I was out of town as well.

I wouldn’t want to single parent as a full-time thing; my husband does a good job of being both a husband and a father.   I’m glad he’s back, down in the basement as I write this post, loading up Fortnite and checking out all the updates since he left.

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Twister Adventure:  My daughter won a blindfolded Twister game at the Braille Challenge.   It’s played like regular Twister but the colored circles are marked with foam shapes on the mat and includes blindfolds.   When the color/shape is called out, you have to feel around to find where your hand or foot has to go.   It’s fun like traditional Twister, but it gives us a little window into what life is like for my daughter.   The only thing she couldn’t do was spin the spinner because you have to see what’s printed on the cardboard to call out what the spinner has landed on.   I labeled it tonight with Left Foot, Right Hand, etc. in the corners, added thin strip tape to separate all of the sections of the circle and then we put tactile stickers on each color so “Red Circle” was a raised circle sticker and Blue Diamond was a raised diamond sticker.   My children were both really interested in playing, both with and against people as well as just playing by themselves.   As a sighted person, playing the game with a blindfold on was both disorienting and challenging.   “Red Circle” means “Circle” and red has no bearing.   I realized once I started playing that my daughter uses visual words a lot of the time because we do, even though they mean nothing to her.