I'm ready for Spring

Honestly, I'm worried about my ability to maintain my health and fitness during the next quarter. My schedule, thanks to my boss, is grueling, and if I'm having trouble now, then I worry about what that's going to look like in about three weeks.

I don't know. Perhaps I'm burned out on CF again? But really, am I more likely to get up and run outside in the dark at 5 am? No. Or go to the school's gym and run on a treadmill? No.

I guess the easy solution is that I just become hyper-organized at night so that the mornings are less stressful. And maybe if I'm able to get work done during the day, and work out, and actually let mom and the husband take some control over things, I won't be so wiped out at night and will be able to get things organized. Also, if I can be productive during the day, then I can get to bed at a decent hour so I can get sleep and more easily get up to go work out at 5 am. And perhaps it won't be so bad since I'll have TR off to rest, and by rest I mean do work at home in my pjs and not have to get ready to go anywhere, which is significantly better than wasting time to get ready for work.

Really, I'm just mad at myself this morning for not going to work out when I should have. And I'm mad at the cookies I stress ate yesterday afternoon and last night.

Here's the new stressor: I think the Magpie is becoming significantly impacted by my stress about my boss, the state's budget crisis, money, and my inability to lose weight and fat, and my general overall stress. She hasn't napped at daycare in like two weeks, which in and of itself isn't a problem because generally she will just lie quietly on cot for two hours while the other kids sleep. But lately, she's been crossing her fingers on both hands (this is her sign of stress) and grabbing her head. She's defiant at school. And we've been having meltdowns daily at home in the afternoon since Friday. I feel incredibly guilty because I don't want to bring that kind of madness to her. And I'm not pleasant when I'm stressed and the other night I was so angry with her for not going to sleep which just made things worse. And then Monday night she had night terrors (which are horrific and frightening, albeit harmless). Aside from my stress that I'm bringing to the table, this is also what I think is going on with her.

1. The grandparents came back. Which is great. But then grandpa left to go back home, and she keeps asking for her "gramps."
2. The J and I were both off last week, and he drove her to school every morning last week including Monday, and yesterday, he did not. He went back to work. As did I. 
3. Two weeks ago, a kid in her class bit her through her sweater. She wouldn't talk about it, as much as she could. When I asked her about it, she shut her mouth, hung her head, and turned away. 
4. Communication issues. I am mad at myself for this one, too. For six months we've been debating the issue of a speech therapist. Every time we go to call the doctor to get a referral, she makes this giant leap in her speech, and we're like, "oh,okay, here we go." But when she was sick, I asked the doctor again, and she thinks it's time for an evaluation. We were hoping to get the evaluation before we hit communication meltdown mode, but it's clear we've missed that train. I know everyone says this about their kids, but Magpie is smart. Or rather, I'm assuming she's smart for a 2.5 year old. She can count to 70 then by 10s to 100, can sing the alphabet (and can sing it correctly if you pick a letter halfway through, like if you start with "L"  then she'll finish the alphabet correctly), knows the sounds of the letters of the alphabet, can tell you what letter words start with, recognizes several words by sight, can spell three words consistently, and has a very large vocabulary. She's very observant. I think her brain works faster than her skill set. I've noticed that she now gets frustrated much more easily when we don't understand her. She repeats herself a lot, I suspect because she thinks we don't understand her, and she has mantras, I guess you'd call them--sentences that she will say when she's trying to formulate what she wants to communicate. Kind of like, "I know I can say this, so I'll start here and try something harder." But now I think we're definitely at the place where her mouth cannot keep up with her brain. I get it. There are few things more frustrating than not being understood. To know you are speaking and no one else is getting what you're saying.

I feel like a failure because like with the tubes in her ears, I was trying to do everything I could to help her to avoid tubes and speech therapy, and I feel all I've done is delay the inevitable, and therefore delay her development and stress her out. I love my kid, so much, but I feel like I've done a horrible disservice to her. And of course, this makes me want to stuff my face with cookies and wine. 

I guess regardless of what happens this week with my blood tests, I need to work on healing my body and my brain (I really need to go back to meditating. I have an amazing app that I pay for that I love, but just don't use like I should and when I do, I know it helps) so that I can be a more functional and productive mom to my little Magpie. I don't want to stress her out. My poor kid. 

Honestly, perhaps if we can establish a routine next quarter, for both me and the kid, things will run better. Maybe that's been the problem this quarter, and the plague of winter quarter every year is that we start, then we break for two weeks, then we start, then we have a day break, then we start, then it's another four day break, then we start back up again, and look, it's the end of the quarter. Maybe the spring will be better.