A tired little one

This week, Christmas break was over with a vengeance, and our ordinary lifes fell on top of us like a ton of bricks...

Mostly on top of the little one though. We started to suspect it the whole of December, but now it's painfully obvious - she's not coping well with the long days at the pre-school. She's stressed out and exhausted. Our guess is that she's doing fine when she's there, and only showing her fatigue at home, which isn't that unusual for kids.

She's not sleeping well, or enough. She's throwing tantrums every day, over the smallest things, and becomes inconsolable every now and then. She can't sit at her chair and eat with spoon and fork any more, she sits in a lap and we feed her - something she didn't even want us to when she was a baby. And she's three and a half now.  She cries every morning, and sometimes when she's dropped off, over not wanting to go. She wants to stay at home. When we get home at dinner time, she's grey-faced and her eyes are almost dead, she's immobile (and this is a kid that's ordinarily never still) and all she wants to do is sit in a lap with her blanky and pacifier and watch the telly. This is not a healthy way of being for her.

We've been referred to a child psychologist and we're waiting to hear from them. And I've booked a conference with one of the staff at the pre-school this Tuesday, to start discussing what they see and inform them of the change we're seeing.

This week has been a somber one for us. It's no fun when one of our little family isn't feeling well. Especially not when it's our precious daughter. Of course, the obvious solution is to shorten her days, but we can't do that. She started to go full days (9-4.30) this fall, and we need to keep working full time both of us this spring too. We can't afford for Mistress to work less (not without selling the car and perhaps moving, at least) and we both want to prioritise me graduating this summer, so that I can get a job and earn money. When that's accomplished, we can probably both start working part-time, and the problem will go away (at least until she starts school...). But this spring, we need it to work out for her.

Parenting can really put a damper on anything kinky or sexy or even slightly romantic. When little S isn't okay, we have one problem, and one problem only. The rest of life mostly has to wait.