I Almost Had To Quit My Job This Morning

This morning Pumpkin woke up a little later than usual.  When it was time for me to leave for work, he was just sitting down at the table with Sparkle and Beloved, and Beloved was coaxing him to eat his breakfast. 

Pumpkin is very often (almost always) super crabby or super whiny before he eats in the morning.  He's so crabby that it's hard to get him to eat because nothing is right-- not enough milk/too much milk, too much peanut butter/not enough peanut butter, do it for me/I want to do it myself...  Once you can get two or three bites down him he turns into a different kid, back to his normal cheerful self.  It's very dramatic. 

I was doing the last-minute rush-around, grabbing my jacket, my keys, my lunch, my phone and my coffee.  Just as I was ready to go out the door I stopped and kissed them all.  Pumpkin was whining something at me but I couldn't understand him, so I said, "You'll need to use words, Pumpkin, because I can't understand you.  What do you need?"  And he turned to me, literally with two tears running down his little cheeks, and pointed to me as I was poised to exit right that moment and said quietly,

"You.  I need you."

.

(insert strangled, desperate sound from both me and Pumpkin here)

.

So I was a little late this morning.

.

As soon as I got to work (which was only about seven minutes after I left the house) I emailed Beloved and asked, "How is Pumpkin?  Is he okay?"  Of course he was fine. 

Very happily, I was able to leave work early today and picked up the boys just after their lunch time at school.  Today we've made cookies, played football, watched Sesame Street, and read books together.  Sparkle made supper for us and he was very proud. 

(It was Six Can Tortilla Soup. I opened the cans of corn, beans, chicken broth, and tomatoes and he poured them all into the crock pot.  He grated cheese and got tortillas and sour cream out of the fridge.  He set the table.  So...  Not that hard, but pretty good for a five year old, right?  I was proud of him, and he was proud of himself, especially when I told him he's going to have to be in charge of supper more often.  Five year olds are happy to do anything when they see it as being "in charge" of something.)

We've had a good day.  I'm glad I didn't quit my job. 

It was pretty close there for a few minutes, though.

Comments

[haze]

Aw, Pumpkin. What a sweetheart.

[Heidi]

That's beautiful! Sweetness at it's best! :)

[Patricia]

I took 6 weeks off this summer to spend with my darling and boy was it hard for him to go to school and let me leave for work...still is after 2.5 months! So I know exactly how you felt!

What a sweetheart - don't those tear trickles break your heart?

[wendy]

Claire is like that in the morning too. Really anytime she is hungry, she gets so whiny and needy and nothing seems to please her until she starts eating. It's frustrating sometimes.

Glad you were able to have a nice evening together.

[Caroline]

Hi
I can recognize everything about the mornings you have. A doctor told us to give our prince a couple of raisins in bed so he got hissuger level up after the night and actually it works. He is able to eat breakfast withoutto much grumpyness!

[Leah]

It's good to be needed too! I'm glad you decided to be late to work. Keep up the good work

[Angela (eos)]

Just a quick note to say I'm glad you are back and that this may have been due to some post-vacation reaction type thing...although I understand...when I was working Ky pulled a few of those too...ugh...so hard on the heart!LOL