A day without Mommy

Just a short year ago, when Kalina wasn't sleeping and required Mommy's constant attention, I longed for the day when I could escape her clutches. Her cuteness, while magnetic, occasionally couldn't surpass her neediness and frankly, I needed a break.

On Tuesday, it came, in the form of a business trip to visit a new client: Grandfather Mountain. Had the client been a dreary one, I don't think I could've torn myself away from my little cupcake, who is far easier to manage now, but the North Carolina Blueridge area is tough to pass up. I committed to attending.

*gulp*

Swallowing my true feelings, I commenced writing a 3-page, single-spaced document about Kalina's care, feeding and napping (which required a whole page all of its own) during the 10-hour period she'd be in the hands of her grandpa and her Aunt Nancy. They laughed, but committed it to memory, I'm told.

I was to leave for the 4-hour journey upon Matt's arrival home from work Tuesday evening. On Monday, Kalina was a perfect angel, sweet as sugar sweetened with honey. (Yes, it would've been much easier to leave if she'd been disagreeable--I'll admit it.) On Tuesday morning, she said her first sentence: "I love you," to me, with a smile and a hug, and I felt like the worst mommy in the world. During naptime, I tried to think of every excuse I could to get out of the trip. At snacktime I burst into tears and Kalina tried to cheer me up by waving at me before breaking down into sobs and needing a hug herself. And on Matt's arrival home, I reluctantly left a crying Kalina with her Daddy.

That evening, while I was sitting in a car with 3 coworkers, trying to make light conversation through a sore throat and congestion, Kalina was visiting the mall with Daddy. They played upstairs in the food court before heading back home for bedtime.

My bedtime came much later. And to my dismay but not surprise, the peaceful full night of sleep I'd dreamed of for a year and a half was not forthcoming, as the temperature of my room escalated to at least 85 degrees and my head cold didn't allow me to breathe very well. I think I slept worse than when I had a 7-month-old. Amazing.

However, I was cheered by the knowledge that Kalina was up long before I was (my alarm rang at the sunny hour of 7:00), as well as an email from my dad that showed Kalina tolerated the hand-off from Daddy to Grandpa quite well and was already gleefully breaking rules Mommy had set only a day before.

While I toured the mountain, enjoying lore as amazing as the views and braving strong, cold winds to cross the mile-high swinging bridge, all the time wondering whether I would die first from frostbite or from being blown off a cliff, Kalina relished the sole attention of her grandpa and her Aunt Nancy. The little ham was on her best behavior, and managed to put on quite a good show for them as well as she enchanted them with smiles and sorted blue objects. She also learned a new two-syllable word: out-side.

At naptime, I was engrossed in discussing the future direction of the organization's marketing with half my brain and using the other half to calculate whether we'd make it home before bedtime (yikes, what if we didn't?!?). Kalina was undergoing her nap routine, as carefully outlined in a full page of my Kalina Kare document, at the hands of Aunt Nancy. Despite a few self-proclaimed potential slip-ups (do I turn out the light before or after Kalina is in the crib?!?), Aunt Nancy managed to get Kalina down for a successful nap. Fortunately, Aunt Nancy never had to use the suggestions under the bullet points: "if Kalina talks for 45 minutes and then starts crying..." or "if Kalina wakes up early...."

My afternoon was spent enduring carsickness and dry contacts on the way back home. Kalina's was spent at the park with her Daddy, who took off early since he'd worked a lot on the weekend, Grandpa, and a friend she saw there.

The one mishap of the experience happened around 5:30 when the day had already been long for Kalina and Daddy mentioned the "M" word in the most innocent way: "We haven't seen Mommy for a while, have we?" Oops. The tears flowed, but fortunately Kalina was able to bottle them back up.

I was thrilled to see that my homecoming wasn't met with the nonchalance or misbehavior several books had warned me could happen. No, instead I was greeted by a little girl so joyful that she couldn't help but practically skip toward me as fast as she could, toddler-style, arms open wide. Kalina spent the rest of the evening exuberantly pulling me around by my finger.

Photo: Kalina and her mommy's cousins girls, ages 3 and 5, whose visit to the area last weekend Kalina thoroughly enjoyed (as did the rest of us).