With Mike gone the last couple of days, I had really been dreading my new responsibilities. Mike generally handles the farm chores, and watches a child or two when I need to go do something (like use the bathroom) at which I can't manage two children. We've also recently been having trouble with Adam and nap-/bedtimes, and I was completely expecting these two days to be hell. But frankly, they weren't! (It's still 9AM on day two, so I reserve the right to reverse that statement. *wink*)
Yesterday morning, Kayla woke me up after too little sleep. Adam was still out, so I carried her upstairs. I nursed and played with her, finally nursing her to sleep, and didn't quite know what to do. See, it was 7:30, well past the time the animals are used to being let out and/or fed, and Amanda was still asleep. I didn't want to take Kayla out to the RV, because she might wake up, and I was terrified she might roll off the bed. I decided to pile pillows up all around her (she was really quite out) and rush through chores as best I could. Lucky for me (but not for Amanda), the carbon monoxide alarm in the RV went off as I was piling the pillows, and she met me at the door. She looked after a sleeping Kayla while I went to tackle morning chores (nothing to report there). Amanda went back to sleep around 9 or so. About 10AM, Adam woke up and came upstairs. He played and chattered around for awhile. I let him watch one of his Bob the Builder movies about 1PM. Around 1:30, Amanda came back in. She picked up a screaming Kayla while I finished wolfing down my lunch. About 4, Kayla finally took a nap. I was pretty tired, so I lay down beside her and catnapped. Thirty minutes or so after that, Adam tugged away the pillow I hold while I sleep, and replaced it with himself. Less than five minutes later, he was deeply asleep. Perfect! This woke me up, but that was ok; I needed to go do afternoon chores. Again, nothing to report.
I came back in and Kayla woke up not long after. Her brother slept til just after 6, at which point I went down and popped in a pizza and chicken nuggets for dinner (yeah, I know, I took the path of least resistance for toddler dinner. SUE ME!). We ate, I gave Adam a bath while Kayla cruised around on the bathroom floor. For awhile, I stood her up so she could hold onto the tub and peer over the edge at her bathing brother. He splashed around and showed out for her, which garnered many giggles. They're finally starting to play together a bit!! I got Adam dressed and we went upstairs. Amanda looked after them while I did the evening chores. This time, there was something to report - we're down one outside cat. I found a very black, very stiff, very dead outside cat lying in the front yard. Picked it up and carried it to a covered trashcan. Mike can bury it when he gets home. Got back in and alternately played with Adam, read him books, and played pinochle (I'm just learning - so far I think I understand everything but meld bidding). About 11 Adam announced, "I'm sleepy." I concurred, so we said our goodnights, gathered the Princess kitty, grabbed some extra diapers, and went to bed. One story from Adam's Bob the Builder book, a little bit of nursing for Kayla, and it was lights out. She was fast asleep within two minutes of my arm slung over her hips (to keep her from rolling over). Adam thrashed awhile, cuddled awhile, said many, "I 'ove oo, Mama"s, and finally went to sleep. I was right behind them.
No major interruptions overnight, which might be too bad, because I didn't wake up til 8:30 to do chores. The kids were both still asleep, as was Amanda, so I decided to just take my chances and leave them on the bed together. Rushed through chores (nothing to report) and came back in. Kayla had woken up, rolled over, and was happily playing with a clean diaper. I popped in some toast and went to change her (soaked through). She helped me put butter on my toast, and then we came up here to write this diary entry. Thrilling stuff, ain't it? ;-) I have had a raging sore back the past two days, but hydrocodone seems to be keeping it in check.
I miss Mike.
MHG arrived last night. Now that she's here and I've talked to her about it, I can say who it is - it's my friend Amanda, from Quilt Camp Days. She arrived around 6:30 or so. We spent some time unloading parts of her truck and getting her computer upstairs and set up, then had dinner. We spent the rest of the night playing spades and decompressing. Mike went to bed early, since he woke up and left at 4AM this morning. He had to go to Seattle to meet with a potential client there. He'll be gone today and tomorrow, then Thursday is Adam's pre-school.
I took Adam to his preschool yesterday. I think he had a good time, though I didn't go down and check on him this time. When he came upstairs after his class was over, his teacher told me he was good at puzzles, and that he had helped her put chairs away when class was over. We went into the bathroom afterward to change diapers (I had both kids, so it took awhile) and he could hear the other children. He said he wanted to "go see more boys" and kept trying to go into his classroom. We did the McDonald's drive-thru on the way home, since I wasn't feeling up to wrestling the two kids in and out of the truck again. A short stop at the Grange on the way home finished up our shopping day.
It looks like that friend I mentioned will probably arrive here tomorrow or early next week. A few people have asked me who it is, and one friend even teased me that I was being "mysterious". The fact of the matter is that while I'm very candid about my own life, and let it all hang out here, everyone isn't like that. The MHG (Mystery House Guest) might not want me to spill information about her here, so I won't. Eventually she might have her own site, or explicitly tell me it's ok to tell more, but until then I'm not. I'm trying to respect her privacy.
It's 3:40AM, which might let you know just how much sleep I have(n't) been getting. I really think that, at this point, I'm just plain insomniac. I won't bore anyone with a chronology; suffice to say I'm operating on a serious sleep deficit at this point, but can't manage to stay in bed longer than four or five hours, no matter what time of day or night I go to sleep. I'm tired of fighting this state of affairs, and will just trust my body and mind to work this out.
We had to skip pre-school last week because Adam hadn't yet slept the night before. Hopefully we'll make it this week, because otherwise we will have missed three in a row, which would be awful. We'll just have to see how it goes.
I bought my chair the other day, and forgot to mention it here. It's very comfortable if you're leaning back, but doesn't offer any lumbar support if you hunch forward, which I do often when peering at the screen. Perhaps someday I'll get better at testing chairs in the store, but for now, I really can't complain about this one.
I finally took the tree down Saturday. I had taken the ornaments and whatnot off of it right after Christmas, but the tree had lingered on. No more! Now I can proceed with furniture shuffling and other assorted housecleaning. And now, to round off this journal entry, random family pictures!
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| Kayla, teething on my chin | Mike in his new hat | Peanut butter and jelly boy |
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| Charge it! |
I've turned into some weird Count Momcula. Yesterday, I fell asleep at dawn and woke up at dusk. I tried to get to sleep at about 3:30 this morning, tossed and turned til about 5, then got woken up by a screaming baby at 7. I'm tempted to try to go back to sleep, but figure I should probably just stay awake, or I'll never get off of this goddamn stupid sleep cycle. I'm grumpy, can you tell?
I took Adam and Kayla out Sunday for a little bit of shopping. It went ok. Tomorrow is another playdate for him, and tonight is a dinner with BETA. I'm going to leave Kayla home with Mike and go by myself. I'm looking forward to the break from motherhood.
Looks like a friend of mine might be moving here in about 9-10 days. If she shows up, I'll talk about it in more depth. In the meantime, there's a fair amount of furniture shuffling and whatnot that needs to be done.
Kayla and I went to see Two Weeks Notice last night, preceded by dinner at Applebee's. When I left, I intended to go to the basketball games over in Lacrosse. I actually went to Lacrosse, but couldn't find where the games were being held. Since K and I were already dressed and out, I went over to Moscow. I thought the movie was pretty cute, but Alicia Witt is annoying and distracting, and should seriously stop smiling so much. I don't mean to sound catty, but she's got this enormous overbite and looks downright skeletal.
My chair broke. :( It has this rigid bar up the back that doesn't allow you to lean back without hitting the recline lever, and I occasionally lean back and forget to hit the lever. Long story short, the seatback has come almost completely detached from that rigid bar, and I will need a new chair. I'm going to a quilting thing on Monday anyway, so I'll just go over to Moscow then and get a new one. Pain in the ass, though.
I've been thinking a lot about my step-father lately. I even went so far as to look his name up on the Internet. I found very few hits, but among them were his death date. April 19, 1997. So he's been dead almost six years.
Happy New Year! I've now been keeping this journal for over four years. In that time, the site has grown quite substantial, and (as is often the case with similar sites), much of it is badly out of date. That's just too bad. The additions of two children, two businesses, numerous other websites, and many other commitments have taken, and will continue to take, precedence. Things get done when they get done.
Speaking of other sites, I've started work on a 500P3R 53KR3T website project. I'll announce it when it goes public, if the site's owners (that's right - this one's NOT MINE!!) want me to. It may be some time yet (see previous paragraph), but it's been fun working on something totally different.
Adam is two. Well, technically, he's 2.375, but he's acting very, very 2. Temper tantrums, stubbornness, dramatic overuse of the word "no", and general bad behavior has become far, far more common. It's by no means his only act, of course, but it's getting harder and harder to parent. I suspect that's always the case, right? The problems just change; they never go away. Since Mike and I aren't spankers, we've been experimenting with all kinds of alternative discipline. These include taking toys away for hitting, refusing to help with activities (like computer games) when having temper tantrums, explaining other ways for him to react, removing him from stress-inducing situations, excluding him from sitting with the rest of the family when he misbehaves at dinner, and when we're really at the ends of our ropes, outright bribery. It goes without saying that we go overboard on praising him for GOOD behavior, when we have the opportunity. Frankly, I've yet to see anything have an impact on him, but we'll keep trying. Yes, yes, I know - normal developmental behavior, blah blah blah.
Kayla seems to be still trying to cut a tooth, with no evident success yet. And she's this || close to crawling. She can pretty much get wherever she wants to go, although it's technically not "crawling" that she does, and it's not fast. She shows zero interest in solid foods, and on the couple of occasions I've tried to feed her either teething cookies or rice cereal with breastmilk, she's spat it back out. That's fine - I'm perfectly willing to follow her lead on that score.