Why is it that the moment one parent leaves town, the kids go insane?

Lee is away at a Ruby on Rails conference with Devon, Morgan, and a few others representing Vonage in all it’s orangeness. My Dad was here until yesterday, so I only have two full days alone with one Monkey, one infant Otter, three dogs (I agreed to keep Devon’s dog Fitz, who lacks housetraining but normally will keep to a pee pad instead of hitting floors and carpet), and three cats. Shouldn’t be too bad right?

Let’s see… The night before I got up at 4:30 am to take Lee to the train station for his journey Monkey threw her first ‘Post little brother” fit. It was complete with screaming and crying and ended with the phrase “you don’t love me anymore, you only love Otter!” Sigh. Lee and I talked her down off a ledge, told her we did love her, and finally got her to sleep. However, Otter then kept me awake until almost 11, thereby giving me only 5 hours of interrupted, fitful sleep to work with upon Lee’s departure. I tried to go back to sleep after dropping him off, but Otter was awake and ready to eat, so it didn’t work. (It’s hard to sleep while a small creature sucks milk out of your nipple, but damn it I am going to master it eventually!)

The next sign that my week without Lee would be more challenging than initially anticipated came when Fitz decided to deviate from the perfectly acceptable pee pad behavior and instead poop on the carpet. Not wanting to risk a rental deposit of astronomical proportions, I cleaned up the mess and confined Fitz to a large linoleum area with temporary toddler fencing. She has still not deigned to hit the pee pad conveniently located near her, but at least she can’t destroy the linoleum. Sigh. (As if I was not already handling enough human waste, now I have to handle doggy waste too!)

The week continued with Monkey waking up at four am two nights ago with a nightmare, and last night having wet the bed, causing me to lose even more sleep than I normally do taking care of the baby. Of course I had failed to wash her previously dirty sheets so when I opened it at 4 am, the sheet cupboard was bare. Sigh. Additionally she has managed to use every tactic in the book to delay bedtime each night this week, leaving her very tired and cranky during the day. Joy!! (She was very well behaved today though, until bedtime, so I am thankful for that.)

Happily my dogs have not gone mad, yet, and Otter is only slightly more cranky and fussy than normal, so things are not as bad as they could be. However, why is it this crap happens when you are already taking a hit for the team?