A day in my life…..
August 1, 2009 by Lisa Beth
Lately, my days have been starting around 3 am…..
As I lay in bed waiting for the inevitable cry from the nursery, I wonder to myself how have I gotten so used to getting up again in the middle of the night that I am actually waking up before the baby? I am SO supposed to be past this. She finally wakes up around 3:30, and I swear that tomorrow I will start letting her cry it out during the night. Tonight (this morning?), however, I am just too damn tired. As I stumble out of the bedroom, I trip over the pile of clothes Chris has left at the foot of the bed before he came to bed. Why can’t he put them in the hamper two feet away??!! Is this too much to ask? Out of habit, I reach down and throw them into the basket myself and mentally remind myself to say something tomorrow as he is climbing into bed and dumping his dirty clothes on the floor.
I get to the kitchen to make a bottle, fumble around the bottle drawer feeling around for a liner. Of course, in my haze, I have left my glasses on my nightstand so everything is a blur, but walking the 20 feet back to the bedroom would be silly. And exhausting. I trip on the dog’s water dish on my way out of the kitchen (why so many land mines in my house?) and spill some formula on the carpet as I walk to the nursery. I failed to screw the top on the bottle good enough. AGAIN. Oh well, the stain will be there in the morning, right? Brooklyn is now pretty upset that I didn’t run to her rescue the minute she woke up, so I make sure Wyatt is still asleep before I go and get the baby. She sucks down her bottle in record time, Is it possible she is really hungry? I watch her as she sucks the bottle down and wonder how her eyelashes grew so long so fast. Not fair.
I lay Brooklyn back down and head to bed. Oh wait, a bathroom break is needed. Children are tough on your bladder, huh? I toss and turn for a good hour before falling back asleep, because I am an insomniac like that. Once I wake up, I’m up for a while. My mind races of all the things that need to be done the next day, and the things I would like to do instead.
6:30am comes too quickly and I hear a shriek from the next room. The boy is up. I jump out of bed to close the nursery door so as NOT TO WAKE THE SLEEPING BABY. Wyatt announces he has to potty and wants help. I try to tell him for the 500th time that I can’t really help the pee come out, but I’ll stand and watch if he’d like. So I do, and he does. I get him set up at the kitchen table with chocolate milk, yogurt, cereal and Dora and sneak back to bed for that last 15 minutes I may be able to savor thanks to Nickelodeon. Of course, that 15 minutes stinks because I am now more tired than when I got up the first time, and am awakened to a juice box being shoved in my face. “OPEN IT MOMMY!” I poke Chris in the ribs and tell him he needs to deal with the kids. I have to shower and it’s a KID FREE ZONE. Brooklyn is starting to stir in her crib. Good timing me!
About an hour later, I manage to get the kids up and out the door, no time to blow dry my hair today. It’s going to rain anyway so I’m not too concerned. At least I remembered make up today. I have had to call Chris a few times since I’ve been back at work and have him bring my makeup bag to my office. I scared myself looking in the mirror in the bathroom. Who is this pale woman with no eye makeup staring at me? AHHH! I drop the kids off at “school”. Brooklyn smiles as I leave and Wyatt hangs around my neck for “one more hug” then hurries off to find his friends. I’m glad they like their daycare, but would it kill them to cry once when I leave?
On the way to work, I drive past a Gloria Jeans and well, late or not, the coffee is worth it. My work day starts with a stack of papers in my “in-box” and I scurry to prepare for the two meetings I have scheduled that (shocker) I am not completely prepared for. My first meeting starts at 11:00 and when I look at the clock next it is 1:15 and realize my next meeting was supposed to start at 1:00. No lunch for me I guess. I head to the next meeting (a short drive away) and stop at a gas station for some chex mix and more caffeine to munch on during the meeting. The next time I look at the clock it is 3:45. I think I should call it a day. My brain hurts. After one last stop at my office to see how much work has accumulated while I was in meetings THE ENTIRE DAY, I am depressed to see that it is a lot. So I sit down to finish the new work. So much for calling it a day….
I pick up the kids at “school” and learn that Wyatt pooped his pants at lunchtime, oh, and Brooklyn’s out of formula and needs it by tomorrow. This means I’ll be going to the store tonight as I am almost out at home as well. I try to talk to Wyatt about the pooping incident, and of course he wants no part of the conversation. I tell him I now have to take away his transformers for the rest of the day because he pooped in his big boy pants to which he responds, “OK.” Hmmm….what’s plan B? I don’t have one. QUIT POOPING YOUR PANTS CHILD!
Dinner tonight will be whatever we can scavenge. My brain still hurts from my meetings. Chris has gone fishing for the evening, which is not unusual on a warm summer day, so we are on our own for dinner. Tonight it is “scavenge the fridge” night. Wyatt has a combination of breakfast sausage, rice, and strawberries. And of course, chocolate milk. I have some left over chicken salad and pasta from Johnny Carinos. Brooklyn has rice cereal and applesauce. All of which she spits at me. Time to change clothes I guess.
We spend the rest of the evening outside. Brooklyn and I watch Wyatt sing and dance around the driveway, play basketball and ride his hotwheels. Brooklyn smiles so big at her brother I am surprised that her jaw doesn’t fall off her face. For a moment in time, all the stars align and both my children are smiling, content and don’t want anything from me. I bask in the moment and wish it would never end. But it does and eventually Brooklyn is hungry again and it’s time to start getting the kids ready for bed.
It is now Brooklyn’s crabby time of the day, it is unfortunate that her “crabby time” is during the few hours she is at home and awake during the week. I stick Wyatt in the bath tub, wash him up real quick, then go tend to my crabby pants baby. After bath time, Wyatt brings me a stack of 10 Berenstein Bears books for his bedtime story. I laugh and tell him to pick out one. Can’t blame the kid for trying. We read while Brooklyn fusses and tries to eat the pages. Wyatt patiently moves her hands away, and tries to hold them back from riping his beloved book in half. I tell him he can read quietly in bed while I put Brooklyn down, if he’d like. Of course he does, so he picks out another Berenstein book and as I leave his room, I hear him “reading” quietly. I stop and listen, he is actually reading some of the parts correctly. Has my genius child taught himself to read? More likely he has memorized parts of the book, we have read it so many times.
I feed Brooklyn her bedtime bottle, then we go through her newest bedtime routine. Singing and rocking in her nursery. I know she must be tone deaf also, because she smiles and coos the entire time. I kiss her for the thousandth time today, tell her goodnight and lay her down, drowsy, but not comatose. She “talks” for a few minutes, then falls asleep. I head into Wyatt’s room and he has finished reading his book and is lying, eyes half open, with his favorite balnket I make him pulled up to his chin. “You scratch my back?” he requests. I more than willingly agree. Chris is normally in charge of bedtime, so I savor the moment to snuggle with my boy. We snuggle and talk, and he tells me all sorts of stories from his day, some of which make sense, others that do not. I tuck him in with a kiss. “I love you so much!” he proclaims as my heart melts a bit.
I go downstairs, watch a little TV, print some pictures of the kids to take to my office tomorrow, and read some blogs, completely ignoring the piles of laundry and dishes that lurk upstairs. There’s always tomorrow, I think. As I head for bed, I can hear that Chris is home, probably cleaning fish in the garage. I wash my face, squeeze the last bit out of the toothpaste tube and think I should go to the store tomorrow and get more toothpaste. I climb into bed, reflecting on the day. It was a good day, all in all. No major catastrophes. Kids were pretty good. . . .OH CRAP. I FORGOT TO GO TO THE STORE AND GET FORMULA FOR THE BABY.
Thanks to MamaKat for the blog idea….
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