A Good Day Until...

We had a good day yesterday. A full day. And today promises to be more of the same particularly because Johnnie has a BEACH themed Zoom get-together with his class tonight. As for me it's one of my breath out days which means I'm in the middle of cruise control after having sprinted yesterday. I'm still focused on making sure Johnnie develops confidence in working with his chromebook to do his classes, no different than when I was trying to develop his confidence in his scooter (which he did) and his bike (which he did). And so the morning went tat-tat-tat. Johnnie's class, then before it was even over, my meeting with my team at 9:30, then as soon as that was over the Director's Meeting at 10, which lasted until 11:30 actually. So much for cruise control. I thought my meetings were productive though and I know Johnnie's class was as well and I loved that he is learning to articulate himself in more than a-few-syllable answers. Still I was able to let him engage with me even while I was on my Zoom meetings for a good 2 hours and he at least tried to do things on his own before coming in to talk to me. You get surprised at the things he puts together when left alone. A kite. A paper boat. All kinds of messages and signs and then here I am declaring that it's lunch time and we needed to head out to pick up food. After my meetings I had no intention of cooking anything, and I was happy to eat a McDonald's chicken sandwich for lunch. Man I'm sure putting in a lot of money in that place on a daily basis aren't I? I supplemented Johnnie's Mcnuggets with some udon. And so what made me irritated when he took his time eating everything and started stuffing food in his mouth is something I need to introspect about. Was it that he didn't eat the food after I spent time preparing it? Was it that he was about to throw it all up? Whatever it is that irritated me, what I need to remember was that I made Johnnie cry. And I think it was something I myself created since I was just thinking a little while back that it had been sometime since I did that. And it was just this morning that I remembered it and thought simply that it was a bullying act on my part. And here I am recreating it. Sigh. The good thing was that I do know how to make him feel better no matter what and all I needed to do was snap myself out of my own state, tell him it was all ok and it was daddy's fault, and tickle him a little bit to make him laugh. And then it was all good again.

And so I got him back to his happy self for the afternoon and I let him read all kinds of books from the EPIC library online that he now has access to. Especially his favorite "Don't let the pigeon ride DA BUS!" And although I didn't have any more meetings for the afternoon, I did have a lot of emails to respond to and stuff to follow up on. And so my cruise control Thursday ended up being a work Thursday unlike I would do before in the office. I think you DO more when you work from home actually. Maybe it's because you feel guilty when you don't much more so than if you were in the office. Weird huh? For his part, Johnnie continued to work independently most of the day, even as he kept coming in to my room asking me if I was done with my calls. All the kid wants to do is hang out with his dad. Aww. I would have loved to say we took the afternoon off and rode around the neighborhood like we had before but when I looked up from work it was already 4:30 PM. I did manage to get in a few minutes of fun with him here and there. A swordfight with plastic straws. Our exercise time with YouTube. But before I knew it it was already time to head out to get dinner. Panda Express for him, leftover fettuccini bolognese for me. And then at 7 PM his BEACH ZOOM meeting. That reminded me of Build-A-Tent night with his TK class a few months ago. I ended up doing that at my house because Lisa bugged out. And I'm starting to think she gets really frustrated with all this Zoom stuff. She says so herself. And she said it again when she called to pick up Johnnie right in the middle of his Zoom call. Immediately it took away my focus from Johnnie squarely to her because I sensed a whole lot of negativity.  And instead of protecting myself from it, I played into it. I dropped my guard I admit. And so it should not have been a surprise that when she did pick Johnnie up, the usual catch-up conversation devolved into a full on argument. My offer to help again tomorrow morning seemed to have brought out Lisa's feelings of being inadequate. And now she is on the defensive. Blaming this, blaming that. And I couldn't be emotionally supportive becaused I FELT attacked. And i got on the defensive too. And so the evening ended with me simply walking off <better that than to have Johnnie watch us argue> and stewing for the rest of the evening. Well it WAS a good day... until Lisa happened. I really need to work on that. Because I know all that is still up to me...