I can't be sure, but I think Huckle must've read a book on torture techniques used in prison camps or some such. Bless his heart, he's hitting each. and. every. nerve.

I'm reminding myself that this is all because he feels as though he's been abandoned again, that there's no way for him to be sure that Daddy will, in fact, return. He's freaked, his anxiety level is at about 572% of normal (and normally, he's so hypervigilant and wound up that he's vibrating -- ever given a ferret a triple espresso? Neither have I, but that's how I imagine it). As craptastic as I feel, he's got it a lot worse.

I have no clue how I'll get through the next two weeks with only a brief Daddy respite. My mom and sister are in the home stretch of 300-guest-wedding prep, my dad has a new client and can't be left alone with him anyhow (arm stuff, thanks attic ladder!), and all I want right now is to not hear my name repeated thirty times a minute, to not be woken up once an hour each night, to not be touched constantly, anda anda anda.

I do my best. I don't yell (except when something scary happens, like he takes off running with a fork in his mouth), I'm praising whenever possible, but there are only so many times in a day I can go from playdoh to puzzle to book to castle to horsey to bacon to waffles to pancakes to Dora to donthitthedoggy and back to playdoh, ad infinitum. I tried the park, but it was a failure. I wasn't able to get Daddy on the phone at all today -- oh how I paid for that. Huck was up from 2 AM to 8 AM, so I kept him home from preschool with the hope that he'd finally sleep, but not so much.

Above everything else, it is just so mentally draining to parent a child that both rejects you and clings to you. I know why he does it, I've seen improvements, we were moving forward, and we'll continue to move forward again, I don't blame him at all, but it is exhausting.