Chris has been out of the country for 5 days. That meant I had to take care of our little 4 month old daughter alone for four days.

Children are meant to have two parents. MOTHERS are meant to have a back-up.  It’s not that I mind taking care of her. The holding, the rocking, the changing of diapers and feedings–these are not SO bad. I can carry her forever as long as I have someone to carry me.

The bad part? The awesome alone-ness. The quality of being alone, by myself, is a totally different quality than being alone with my baby. Faced with the prospect of being alone with her for five days had me quivering in my socks.

So I lined up a social activity for every day that I would be alone. It worked out okay, and I practiced my new mantra “I can handle whatever comes.”

The whatever could and did include a child who refused to go to sleep at night, a child who woke up every HOUR all night long, and a kid who decided she was hungry but wouldn’t eat.

But I could handle that. I am the grown up here, I can handle it. To borrow a stranger’s blog comment “It’s amazing what you can handle when you have no other choice”

What I cannot handle, is being alone. I KNOW that if I don’t have contact with the outside world, the wallpaper will start talking to me. And I don’t have wallpaper.

But Chris comes home tonight. 9 and a half hours from now.