Today was not my day….in fact, include last night into it as well. It’s not like there was one big thing that devastated my day but rather layer upon layer of small things piled up to overwhelm me.
I am not good at admitting I am not doing a good job at something. At all. I’m also not good at realizing that I’m not perfect at something I take pride in doing well. So this is harder for me than I like to come to terms with. Sometimes motherhood isn’t perfect. It’s my job, it’s my passion and it’s my favorite thing in the world but some days, like most of today, I feel like I can’t do it the way I want to.
Avery’s main struggle with Eli joining the family has been fighting bedtime/naptime. It’s really exhausting to get him down and last night I was doing a solo bedtime and made a very massive mistake by not nursing Eli right before attempting to put Avery down. This resulted in an hour of very unflattering and unpleasant back and forth between Avery and I with Eli being extremely unhappy in the living room wanting to feed. I couldn’t feed him because Avery wouldn’t stay in bed long enough. I felt awful.
Things finally calmed down and the rest of our night was pretty good with Eli eating every one and a half to two hours over night and sleeping between.
The morning wasn’t terrible since Eli and I had a pretty good feeding rhythm last night but the trouble started with Avery fighting his nap. By fighting, I mean FORTY FIVE MINUTES of crazy kid. This sort of thing has never happened before with Avery until Eli arrived and it’s really stressful for me because I know he’s feeling emotional because of the shift in our family dynamic. Add in Eli wanting to feed again about twenty minutes in and you’ve got yourself one distressed mama.
To make matters worse, I had to break the cardinal rule of parenting and wake Avery up from his nap since we had to get out of the house while a bug guy came to spray for ants. I was hoping he’d sleep the whole hour and a half but since he fought for so long (totally tired and cranky) he only got forty five minutes of sleep. Not cool.
Then I needed to get a money order and realized, after getting both kids into the store, I didn’t know the pin number for the debit card I was using so I had load the kids back up, to go pick up Shane’s debit card from his office and drive back, unload the kids and get the money order. In the time Avery had melt downs every time he was put back into his burning hot carseat.
Then I went to Trader Joe’s and got everything on my list except coconut oil (most important item on my list) and after getting everything loaded in the car, including kids, I realized this and had to get them all back out to go get the oil. Then the data ran out on my phone. Then the gas light turned on. Then my phone battery died. And did I mention Eli HATES the car? Also, it was a sunny 90 degrees with the sun streaming into the back seat making both the boys cranky and hot.
I would say it was a comedy of errors except that I kept crying because I’m a dramatic person.
However, once we all were back home Avery suddenly transformed into the most animated, adorable, affection and entertaining boy, the one I know so well, and it made up for everything. He shelled out sweet kisses like it was his job, enjoyed all his toys and an extended game of chase with me that had him running towards me for hum worthy hugs and cute smiles. He hasn’t been like this since Eli was born and I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see it coming back. I’ve missed him like that!
It’s amazing what a little guy like this can do to a household.
Definitely harder to fully absorb the newborn stage while my concerns are mostly related to my toddler. Such a different experience the second time around. I’m having to emotionally be present for Avery constantly and physically available for Eli 24/7. Avery’s struggle with the transition has been much more challenging for me than I was prepared for.
It has opened up something else in my relationship with Avery that has been really precious though. Since I try to take advantage of every moment that Eli sleeps to make quality time with Avery, he has started spending a lot of time with me in the kitchen. It’s been really fun since he’s learning new words every day and is always trying to find new things to point to and ask ‘What IS that?”. As you all know I love spending time in the kitchen and sharing that with him has been exciting for me. Each morning we’ve been making the banana/egg pancakes.
I apologize for the gnarly looking pancake….I was trying to show off to Avery and flip it without the spatula but it was a flop!
One egg and one banana for each pancake. We each eat one for breakfast these days and top them with all sorts of things. Peanut butter, a few chocolate chips, maple syrup or just plain! They’re really tasty. Now he knows egg, pan, and reviews words like banana, hot and pancake.
I’m also snacking on fruit only and have lost all my pregnancy weight plus two more pounds.
This is garden strawberries with a mashed up banana.
Now I just need to lose more weight and be patient about the next three and a half weeks without exercise (aside from super low impact like walking).
So, tomorrow is a clean slate. Avery went to bed tonight without too much trouble and I’ve formulated a new tactic for naptime tomorrow so we’ll see how it goes.
Oh, and I decided that I was going to drop a blog post any day after a night of no sleep. So that is why I didn’t post yesterday. Sorry!
Question: Do you ever have a day where every little thing goes wrong?
I don’t have any kids yet so I probably shouldn’t comment but it seems to me that everything you are going through is exactly what you should be going through while adjusting to two kids. You’re doing a great job! You’ll be an old pro again before you know it and life will flow into a new normal!
My kids are 10, 7 and 5 now but when they were tiny I had many episodes of “dramatic crying” when trying to get everyone out of the house
Don’t worry; you’ll find your rhythm soon and you’d be amazed what a full night’s sleep (or at least a few hours in a row) can do for your mood and patience levels. Hang in there and try to take it easy on yourself; there were some days I had to lower my expectations for things that I wanted to accomplish.
The pancakes look YUM!
Amanda-Thank you soooo much for saying that. It’s hard for me to keep things in context sometimes so it’s nice to hear that.
Good to know:) I know that it’s normal and no one is perfect but I swear I look at my mom (seven kids in my family) and felt like she never struggled….so I have to remember she was superwoman and also that I probably didn’t notice when she was having a hard time since I was probably causing the hard time!
Great title! No superwoman here. I remember those days where you want to laugh and cry at the same time. It’s so hard going through it, but yet it’s so funny how so many things can go wrong at once and you can’t wait to tell the story later and laugh about it. Remember you have a wellspring of Life inside you – Christ Himself – to draw upon. Take advantage!