~Love is written here ~: I only lost my mind once and it was just for a few minutes

Phew. I pulled off Valentine's Day without feeling sorry for myself. Phew I've also almost pulled off being a single mom (entirely single) for the better part of a week.

Sandi has been in Ecuador for ~~267~~ 5 days. I am happy to report that I have done a stellar job of keeping thing intact on the home front. Maya has had a very scary asthma week after she obtained Ella's cold. Somehow I've managed to make the right calls with medication and intervention and have avoided any late night airway crises. (And yes I have about 8 neighbors sleeping with their phones on.) I have been getting up very early in the morning (4sih) to meet as many of my needs as I can before the girls get up. I make a fire, mediate, stretch and get on the elliptical machine (new found joy: watching Breaking Bad or Nashville on the ipad while exercising) before they even wake. I've also been careful not to schedule clients this week and even said no to a few things just because I knew it would be too much. This is a major accomplishment for me.

Thank goodness I have friends like Ange and Emilie who repeatedly send me messages reminding me to do nice things for myself and what a good job I'm doing. I'm telling you, if you don't have friends telling you things like this you need to go find some.

The day Sandi left the girls and I went to Beals after school to stay overnight with Sandi's family (and for me to work the next day). As nervous as I was to head to rural Maine and away from our ER with Maya, I was so cheered and comforted to be with her wonderful family. Homemade haddock chowder, and unexpected power outage which lead to an impromptu dance party with my niece and nephew courtesy of my iphone's music library and s'mores for the kids by the fireplace. Just sharing the worry of Maya's airway with a veteran mom like Patti was of enormous comfort to me.

One of the most difficult things about the week has been an unintended lack of communication from Sandi. She took a global phone from Verizon with her but, for some reason, in the Andes at 10,000 feet, communication between us was not to be. She was sending me emails but I wasn't getting them. After not hearing from her at all, I was worried and upset which added a great deal of stress to this lonely feeling of being at on my own with the responsibility of the house and the girls.

Also, to add further strain, Ella's Valentine's dance had to be rescheduled to this Saturday because this happened last Saturday:

This means that instead of getting the dance out of the way right after Sandi left, I've had to juggle it along with being on my own this week. There are lots of random details that go into putting on this dance, especially after you have to postpone it and do some of that work all over again. However, the postponement also means that Sandi gets to come to the dance if her flight is on time tomorrow so that is the bonus for sure.

So this morning, as I was reflecting on what an amazing job I had done this week and scrambling around to get my day in order (we begin decorating for the dance this afternoon), I let my kids watch the remainder of a movie before school. This is a rare treat and one that I would have assumed would make them bow in gratitude at my feet. However when the TV went off, Maya began a lengthy stint of yelling at me about her Barbie. I did not receive this well. It escalated and came to head with me putting her Barbie momentarily in a snowbank.

Okay, I am laughing about this as I now write it but it wasn't very pretty at the time. She finally apologized, I retrieved the Barbie, gave a stern lecture about how it isn't cool to yell and scream at your family over a Barbie (or her surfboard/mermaid tale...yes, this is a true story) and we went to school. (Thank goodness Maya's teacher is also a wonderful friend and she talked me off the parenting ledge on which I was standing.) I was left feeling confused about whether how I handled that made the point I wanted to make or if I had just made my kids feel afraid for their beloved things and afraid of their mother's temper.

I sent up a silent prayer for single moms everywhere because damn, this is not a job one person should be responsible for alone. There have actually been times this week, darker moments, when I've thought, I can't believe Sandi has left her children in my hands and thinks I can do this.

In review, an A for the week and a D for this morning. I guess that's the way it goes.

Back to Valentine's Day, here are the super cute valentines the kids made:

Yes, we have our kids make their own valentines (and yes we help a lot). The upside is that they express their creativity, they put a lot of thought into it, it is a great project to see from start to finish and so on. The downside is that when you have 25 kids in your class (Ella) and 16 plus two teachers (Maya), you have to work rather diligently to get them done and you don't really have any steam left over to make some just for your friends or family.

Maya was all about the "Love, Maya".

Ella was more of the "From" variety.

Sandi always knows how to make things exciting for the girls by setting up the table in some way for special days. I was proud of what I came up with in her absence. (It should be said that Sandi also makes all signs with fancy lettering- I have the handwriting of a fourth grader- and this dry erase board sign took me an inordinate amount of time and effort.) Sandi made the heart valentines with a note for each girl and they each got a gift and a small chocolate heart.

Maya got the Barbie Mermaid Tale movie (of this morning's movie/Barbie drama) she has been pining for. She has had the matching Barbie for a while and has been desperate to see the movie.

Ella said, "Wow, I hope I get the movie I've been wanting." I asked her what movie that was. She shrugged, unsure herself. She can be a hard one to please. She got the new Taylor Swift cd.

As part of the plan to not be at home feeling sorry for myself while Sandi was gone on Valentine's Day, I made a plan with my friend Heather (whose husband was also out of town) to take our girls to dinner. We went at 4:30 to beat the crowd. It was fun except that Maya acted like a zoo animal and, while it was okay when the restaurant wasn't busy, I ran out of patience when she began dancing around our table, shoveling pasta into her mouth with her hands and licking the window. Oh, and between the two kids I had to go to the bathroom 3 times during one meal. Still, I'm glad we went. Heather is a wonderful person to have as a friend.