Be Careful What You Wish For

You just might get it, but not the way you intended.  We had a great trip to Denmark, which I will write about later.  Everyone who asked me about it received pretty much the same answer.  We had fun, but it was too short and I hope to spend more time there next time.  

Well last week, my Mom fell and broke her hip.  She had surgery the next day and early next week will be moved to a rehab facility for an undetermined amount of time.  While she was in the hospital my great aunt (My Mom's aunt) passed away.  My great aunt was recently moved to a nursing home and my Mom was just starting to go through her apartment and get it ready to sell.  All of my extended family is in Denmark and my aunt and cousins have been awesome in helping out my Mom and making arrangements for my Dad as well as now helping plan a funeral.  My sister is flying out next week to stay for a little over a week.  I'd like to go with her but don't really have any child care back up.  Since she and her husband both work they have a nanny, and her inlaws also live in the same town as them, so a little easier for her to get away on short notice.  

At this point I feel like there is no point in me going now as my Mom is obviously being taken care 24/7 until she leaves the rehab facility. My Dad - while not officially diagnosed - has Alzheimers.  He can no longer drive and gets confused easily.  We have arranged for someone to bring him dinner every night, come and clean once a week and someone else to come in periodically throughout the day and check on him.  My sister and I both feel that he would be safer in some sort of assisted living facility but my Mom doesn't seem to think that that's necessary.  Once my sister gets there we'll have a better idea of how he really is managing.  It's hard to be this far away at this point and if the kids were older and more self-sufficient I would definitely be going with her as well

My little guy has started back at preschool and since they also operate a day care I need to call them about possibly extending his days and hours for a couple of weeks in the next few months.  Our grade school has a before and extended day option so all the kids could be in a supervised situation from 7am to 6pm once school starts up again the last week of August.  My husband has said that with enough advance notice he would be able to trade out of call and lighten his caseload.  Still I think we would need to get some sort of nanny while I was gone to take care of them, cook dinner  and do some cleaning.  

Too much is up in the air at this point to know when I would need to go, but given that my parents live in a two story house with a finished basement, I don't think that's a realistic living arrangement for them going forward.  So I'm thinking I would go around the time that my Mom leaves rehab and/or they get their house ready to go on the market.

So while I definitely wanted to go back to Denmark soon, it wasn't under these circumstances