Day 88: Sick day

Safe to say I failed Lent miserably. As I watched myself wobbling around in the mirror of the fitness studio during yoga last Thursday, I realised that I'm not just unfit (and unbalanced), but overweight too. So I decided that rather than setting myself unachieveable goals, as for Lent, I would try a tick chart of smaller ones, as in The Happiness Project, and aim to hit half of them each day in April.

My husband has been helping me by eating all the cake in the house, and I went for my first run in the Rockies. More of a walk really, due to not having run for 4 months, and the elevation. Of course, one day in, and my plans to go skiing are thwarted by Charlie. She was up through the night with a soaring temperature, and cried for an hour, refusing medicine. She has spent much of the morning snuggled up on the sofa, only venturing off to rearrange the lego bricks on her castle. I managed to catch up on some lost hours of sleep too, interrupted only by the jarring cartoon voices which she insists upon watching. Of course the second Daddy walked in, she leapt up from the sofa, said, "you play with me!" And off they went.

I went for a run. The mountains are stunning to run around (albeit on the flat plain in the middle), and I managed to run further than I walked and pace myself, admitedly with the dance music programmed into the ipodnano. However mapmyrun reckons I'm doing 16 min/mile, so some way to go yet.

So, missing Thursday's day off, Charlie has driven me mad for a few days, as I don't think she should push herself or go swimming, and she does. Resulting in her scribbling crayon all over the TV, and grinding yet more un-nameable substances into the red velour sofa. I obviously went bonkers (turns out baby wipes are better than brillo pads in this circumstance), and screamed at her. She retreated to the sofa shouting, "I want my Daddy," (well he's buggered off skiing again) and fell asleep until he came in. I evntually got the TV clean, God knows what we'll do about the sofa, and felt guilty about losing my rag with her yet again.

It seems cabin fever is a truth. And with so much time in our own company, Charlie and I are incredibly good at finding each other's weakness and exploiting it. I need to remember I am the adult and that mimicing her whining, and stropping and lying on the floor is not really appropriate. She apologised for shouting at me; clever reverse psychology on her part, as I say, "No, no, no, Charlie, mummy is sorry for shouting at you!" Only to realise that she has got away with drawing on the rented TV, and with the state of the sofa we'll probably lose our deposit. She's clever.

Yet as I watch the twilight over the mountains, and face the next two nights of girls alone, I realise how lucky we are: Charlie is incredibly healthy, bouncing back from her night of fever in an few hours, she went to sleep after her three books, and we had a lovely day wandering around in the snow and looking at the birds. Tomorrow, I will be a better parent, and we will enjiy the beauty of our surroundings  as weare half way through our escape, and we haven't enjoyed it as much as we clould.