I have to admit, it's getting better

Today I'm enjoying a rare and wonderful 3-hour Rachel nap. 3 hours and counting, I should say. Wow! Natalie never napped like that. (Mommy! Don't compare your kids! Oops.)

Natalie is napping, too, and I just realized I have neglected my blog of late. It's been because life is that stinkin' busy. Things got really, really hard for a while. I got pretty depressed. I got to a breaking point, where I was saying things like, "I hate my life" to my husband as he was getting ready for work one morning and the girls were both crying. I finally cried, and cried every day for a couple of days.

Then I officially pulled Natalie out of Mother's Day Out and hired my mom to come over a couple days a week. So far we are still only beginning that transition, but Natalie already knows and loves my mom, so that helps a lot. I think the challenge there is going to be my mom's availability, but I'm starting to feel better even about handling the girls all week, every week, by myself. Even if I have to do it 11+ hours a day.

Natalie is still getting over this spike of separation anxiety that school and daddy's new job brought on. At the lowest point she would burst into tears if I so much as left the room. I finally made myself compromise on the TV thing--she gets to watch TV if I have to be alone in the other room with Rachel (to nurse or help her down for a nap.) TV is Cinderella (still mixed feelings about it, but she's already seen it so many times, I figure the damage is done) or one show a day on Nick Jr, now that we got cable back. We got a land line, too.

Rob and I are going to start the search for a second car in earnest soon. We'll be looking at SUV's and minivans. I don't know what we'll do with the girls while we test drive. Can we get away with bringing them? Can we get away with leaving them with my parents for a few hours? We shall see.

Anyway, we're two weeks out of the last day Natalie went to school, and I'm finally feeling better about the whole situation.

We also had a little bit of rain, two days in a row, and clouds for several days, which brightened my mood considerably. I think I have some sort of reverse seasonal affective disorder. The kind that's only possible when it's this hot and dry for this long. My soul needed rain and clouds.

My dear brother Geoff came over and spent his Friday morning with us last week. He talked to me a little about his meditation practice, and it sounds like something I would benefit from greatly. Now to decide when I'm going to get around to it...

Anyhow, I've got my older child back (mostly), the weather's turning nicer, the money's coming in and my youngest is sleeping a little better. So I'm sleeping better. Life is good again.

Upside-down girl

So, about 2-1/2 weeks ago, Rob started a new job. Almost two weeks ago, Natalie started Mother's Day Out on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, 9:30 - 1:30. It has been a heck of a transition for our little family.

Rob's old job was in the Riata complex, only a couple of miles from our house. He biked to work practically every day, and it worked well. They were very accommodating of our family's needs, and even allowed him to work reduced office hours from the time Rachel was born until she was three months old. He worked the rest of the hours from home, after the girls went to sleep at night. Pretty nice, huh? The schedule he left was M-F, 7-4, basically.

The new job is better for him in many ways, but the commute is a killer, at least for me--he's now gone from 6:30-5:30. Eleven hours without Daddy, every day. He does a combination of bike and bus, but there's really no way to make the commute faster than 1-1/2 hours each way unless we buy a second car. My driving him to work isn't practical anymore--who wants to be stuck on a round-trip cross-town rush hour commute with two babies in the car?

Thankfully, the weather finally cooled off from the 110's to the lower 90's this past weekend. Yeah, there have been wildfires, too. Scary and tragic. So many people have lost so much. I cried watching the news. My parents in Dripping Springs had to evacuate to our house when the Pedernales One fire got to be 3 miles away and the wind pointed it toward their subdivision. Fortunately firefighters got the upper hand on it and my parents were able to return home within a few hours.

So, Natalie started MDO last week. Tuesday went great, no tears until I picked her up, and the teacher said Natalie was happy all day until another little girl accidentally stepped on her foot. But it was past her normal naptime, and I expected some fussiness. She fell asleep in the car. I transferred her to bed when we got home, and she slept 2 hours.

Thursday went horribly. Rachel and Natalie both woke up at 4:30AM and didn't nap at all before we got to school to drop Natalie off. Natalie started saying, "I don't like it. I don't want to go," as we got to the outside doors. Inside she burst into tears and I had to force myself to leave her while she was still crying hard. I felt like a terrible mother. Even worse: at 11:00AM after I got home, it dawned on me I'd left the cellphone in the car. My heart sank as I picked it up and checked voicemail. Her teacher had called at 10:30, thirty minutes prior, for me to come get her. She was beside herself when I finally came and picked her up. The rest of the day didn't get any better. By the end of it, I was a mess myself.

This Tuesday I had to drop my sister-in-law, Jane, off at the airport, after a wonderful long weekend visit. I had to drop Natalie at school first, then drop off Jane. Natalie started crying as we got out of the car. I had brought her a little too early, which made for a longer, tougher goodbye. She was sobbing and screaming when I left. I almost went back to pick her up and never bring her to MDO again. But I didn't want to make a decision like that in the heat of an emotional moment.

Other moms have told me it takes a month, or 6-7 visits, for a child Natalie's age to acclimate to a new school. This feels pretty awful. I feel like I am being cruel and abandoning her. But I'm trying to stick it out, hoping she will actually like school and enjoy her friends and activities there. I'm giving it a month, I tell myself.

This morning, Thursday, went a little better. I started mentioning school in the morning before we left, and at first I thought I had made a big mistake. Natalie's lips started to quiver and tears came to her eyes. She asked me to carry her. She wanted to sit with me as I fed Rachel pureed pears for breakfast. As I pulled out her lunchbox, new backpack and drink cup, she kept saying things like, "I want to go read books! I want to go night-night!" Anything but go to school. Once, she said, "I don't like her." She got sad and got over it a couple of times. I made her the scrambled eggs she said she was suddenly hungry for. She played with them. I started to unbuckle her booster seat and get her down to put her in the car, and her tears started welling up again. "It's okay to be sad," I said, and hugged her close. She cried a little bit, hugged some more, then we went to the car. I asked her if she wanted her sunglasses, thinking maybe it might help if she wanted to hide behind them. She did.

It was about 9:27 when I left. School is 5 minutes away, and it takes us a few minutes to get out of the car, so I knew we would be a few minutes late.

We made our way slowly to the classroom. Her teacher and aide greeted her cheerfully and I put her things in her cubby. She said, "Mommy!" and I sat down next to her to give her a goodbye hug and kiss.

I expected the crying and screaming again, but it was only the trembling lip and downcast eyes this time. I hope and pray this means it is getting a little easier for her.

Update: Minutes after I posted this, I got a call from the school director, asking me to come pick up Natalie. The teacher suggested that I expect a call from her early in the day if Natalie's upset again next week. We talked about experimenting with early pick-ups for a while. Poor Natalie!

A good day in the life

If you were to drop in and watch a day in my life right now, it would probably go something like this:

5:30 AM: Give up on trying to get restless Rachel to go back to sleep, turn on the lamp and start returning coos and saying "ba ba ba!" back to her cute, smiley, wide-awake face.

5:45 AM: Greet Natalie and put her up on the bed with Rachel and me. Mosy into the kitchen when the girls seem ready and my shorts are on.

6:00 AM: Make a pot of coffee. Get Natalie's and my scrambled eggs cooked and on the kitchen table. Sometimes there's bacon, cut up fruit, or toast on the side, sometimes not.

6:45 AM: Kiss Rob goodbye as he heads to his bicycle to commute to work. Talk with Natalie about Daddy going to work on his bicycle. (I think she might think he works at a bike repair shop, and not know that he's actually a programmer.)

7:30 AM: Once diapers have been changed, new outfits are on, girls are fed, snacks and drinks are packaged and toys/quilt are loaded, we head over to the neighborhood park, a quarter mile away. We tried a double stroller a few times, but Rachel consistently hated it, so Rachel's in the Ergo on my chest while I push Natalie in the Jeep "jogging" stroller (it doesn't really count as a jogging stroller, says Rob, but it's easier to manage than a typical walking stroller.)

Sometimes we meet friends at the park. I send out a text to one or more of my mom friends in the 'hood.

We play for about an hour, which may involve swinging, sliding, climbing the ladder, drawing with chalk or making handprints from pre-existing chalk drawings, shoveling the recycled-tire playground gravel, going on nature walks, kicking a ball, etc. Rachel hangs out in the Ergo and often nurses or naps right there on my chest, even in the heat. I try to stay in the shade as much as I can. When Rachel wants out of the Ergo, I put the quilt down and let her sit or roll around and enjoy nature and sometimes a toy or two. Natalie always wants a snack and a drink at the park, so snacktime eats up some of our park time, too.

9:00AM: Diapers wet, kids tired, we pack it in and head back home. Occasionally Natalie is upset leaving the park, but usually she's quite ready to go when we go. If she doesn't seem ready when I am, I give her five more minutes, on a timer (thanks, iPhone!)

Once home, we change diapers again, eat again if needed, cool off and play for a few minutes, then embark on the outing of the day, sometimes a play date, more often a trip to HEB to buy groceries. Natalie looks forward to some trail mix ("nuts and raisins!") or a bolillo roll, or a free balloon or sticker. The shopping list is usually short--we go to the grocery store or Target probably five days a week. We wave to the guy at the sushi bar who recognizes us every time. How inefficient, right? But shorter trips make for happier kids (and mom) in this family, and we always need something and I need an excuse to get out of the house every day. Rob and I have made our peace with this reality.

If I'm lucky, Natalie or both girls will fall asleep on the way home.

One of the best things about having kids so close in age is that they both still take naps, often with some overlap. This is precious downtime for me. I think lately they've had overlapping naps about 4 out of 5 days of the week. Weekends are a different animal entirely--I'll cover that in a separate post. When only one girl is awake, I try to really engage with her, even if I'm darting in and out of a household task to do it. With Natalie I read books, have tickle fights, play with Play Doh, talk, sing and involve her in cleaning tasks to the extent that I can. With Rachel, I sit on the floor and hand her toys while she sits or rolls or schooches around, pre-crawling. I plop her in the high chair with a toy and talk and sing to her while I do dishes or whatever. I have extended nursing sessions with Rachel to make up for the lost time when Natalie's awake.

During naps, while I should be sleeping, I catch up on laundry, pick up toys and such, write blog posts... whatever time allows. Usually the cloth diapers are involved in some way, since those pretty much have to be washed, hung to dry, assembled and replenished in the girls' rooms daily. Good thing they dry so fast in this heat. We have a backup stash of disposables for the days when we're out of the house for a long time or I couldn't get the stash clean in time for the next change. Still, I think we are saving money with cloth, and there's something therapeutic about washing them. It's a simple repetition, conducive to meditation.

2PM: When both girls are up, we do lunch. Natalie gets chicken, pasta shells and broccoli, or hard boiled eggs, applesauce and rice, or something along those lines, and a cup of water or decaf iced tea. Rachel gets pureed pear, apple, banana, sweet potato or squash. I haven't been as disciplined about slowly introducing foods with Rache. Fortunately, she hasn't reacted uncomfortably to anything since we started solids for real, maybe two weeks ago.

4:00PM: Daddy, aka Rob, gets home and greets the girls, who are usually both up and playing and/or eating or getting fussy by then. Daddy takes over for a while, because he misses the girls and because by then I really need a break. I get caught up on housework, get started on cooking dinner, work on the odd Sudoku, read or go out by myself.

Sometimes Rob will take Natalie out to Balcones District Park to go to the public pool while I hang back at the house with Rachel.

At 7PM, ideally, things are starting to wind down. Dinner is at least started, if not over. A little more playtime, perhaps some outside on the deck time while I hang up diapers and/or water the thirsty grass and crape myrtles.

7:40PM: I start Natalie's bath. Rob takes over with Rachel, if he wasn't with her already, and attempts to get her to sleep--rocking her, bouncing with her on the exercise ball, or pacing with her in one of our carriers.

8:00PM: I turn Natalie, bathed, diapered and dressed in PJ's, over to Rob for the night. If Rachel is still awake, I take over, with pretty much the same arsenal of sleep inducers, plus nursing.

Our bedtimes were creeping into the 9:30-10PM range, and the girls were sleeping until 6:30 or 7, but the bedtime was just too late for Rob and me. This earlier schedule seems to be working better.

I use the term schedule somewhat loosely--we have a routine we try to follow, vaguely, most of the time.

When Rachel finally goes to sleep, Rob or I put her in the pack-and-play bassinet to sleep, if she's not already snuggled next to me for the night. We're working on the transition from bed to bassinet. Once Rachel is out, I'm usually going to bed soon after--it's the longest opportunity I'll have all night.

Rachel wakes up 4-5 times to nurse on a good night, then goes back to sleep as soon as she's done. It's usually no big deal for me. I have adjusted to waking up and going back to sleep pretty quickly. If I have too much caffeine too late in the day, I'm in trouble; otherwise, unless Rachel is having trouble sleeping, we're both fine.

Sometimes Natalie sleeps through the night. I'm guessing this happens about once a week. More often, she wakes up once or twice for water and a back rub or blankets. Rob is always on duty. This has been the case since I was pregnant with Rachel, and for the most part it has worked well.

So there you have it--a typical weekday, during the summer, for me and my 6-month-old and 2-year-old daughters. My "inbox" is never empty, so to speak--there are always tasks left undone. But if I'm lucky, when the day ends the girls are happy and peacefully sleeping, and I'm not overly exhausted. Or if I am, it's just in time to go to bed.

Day trip

Today was a brave new adventure. The girls and I headed off in grandma's minivan to New Braunfels (an hour south of Austin) with Beth and Piper to visit the McKenna Children's Museum.

In spite of some teething-associated fussiness on Piper's part, and a restaurant meltdown on Natalie's, I think the girls had a great time. They seemed to enjoy each other's company (and lots of snacks, toys and books--thanks Beth!) on the trip down. Rachel was asleep for most of both legs of the trip. On the way back there was a little bit of overtired toddler fussiness, both both toddlers did finally drift off to dreamland.

The museum itself was pretty fabulous, for the most part. At $7.50 per person over 12 months old, it was a little on the pricey end, but well worth it for an occasional day trip. The girls enjoyed having the run of a mock grocery store, ambulance, hospital, science lab, train table, bat cave (including batwing capes--see photos), aquarium, campground, ranch house, newspaper building, bank, rocket ship, mission control and a dark quiet room with interactive art projected on two walls. Their energy fizzled out before we had a chance to experience the art room (paint!) or outdoor water play area, both of which probably would have necessitated another change of clothes anyway.

The exhibits were very toddler-friendly, but also interesting enough to engage, educate and entertain older kids.

My only complaint was that the museum restaurant was poorly laid out (drinks were blocked by the cashier line, for example) and not kid-friendly.

Still, it was a great first roadtrip with friends. We might try Dallas or even Oklahoma City next time--as luck would have it, Beth and I both spent some of our formative years in OKC. Her parents still live just outside of the city. There are some high school friends I could look up and visit. And there's always McGehee's Catfish and Arbuckle Wilderness on the way up.

Bon appetit!

So, after a false start, I am starting solids with Rachel for real this time (I think.) Rachel has been jealously eyeing and screeching over our food since she was about 4 months old, presumably when she first got an inkling of what we were doing and how much we were enjoying it. Having a two-year-old sister eat in front of her probably makes her want it even more.

I started out giving her licks and sips of this and that: soup, fruit, whatever seemed fairly innocuous in tiny amounts. It just made her food lust stronger, so at just over 5 months I mashed up a banana for her, which I was feeding to her when this photo was taken. She loved every minute of it, but didn't eat all that much before she was so ravenously hungry she wanted to skip straight to breastmilk (as far as I could tell; she nursed vigorously when I gave her the opportunity.)

Unfortunately, her next dirty diaper had chunks of undigested banana in it. She seemed pretty uncomfortable leading up to that diaper, so I thought I had better wait a few weeks.

In the interim, Rob gave her a gingerbread cookie (!), which she devoured in crumbly, messy bliss, but which also gave her gas and a hurty belly.

Now, roughly two weeks after the banana incident, I bought some organic baby food at HEB, the stuff we used to give to Natalie when we could afford it. I came out with 3 single packs each of butternut squash, sweet potato, roasted apple and roasted pear, figuring I'd try to be quasi-scientific about looking for allergies and such by introducing one food at a time for a couple of days.

Today she ate the butternut squash. More accurately, she ate 1/5 of the butternut squash, and watched Natalie polish off the rest. She was definitely interested in eating it, but I cut her off when she started gagging as she tried to swallow the last few bites. I use the term "bites" loosely--they are more like tiny sips at this age. I give her a spoon to hold whenever I feed her, a trick I learned with Natalie. So far, so good. Lots of fun, relatively little mess.

Natalie has never been picky about what she eats, only how she eats. As in virtually all other aspects of her care, she wants to be in charge as much as possible. Lately, her big thing is "dipping sauce". She wants a sauce (ketchup, salad dressing, tartar sauce, marinara, yogurt) to be served on the side of whatever main course she is eating (say, green beans, chicken, fish sticks or scrambled eggs). She will dip the weirdest combinations and love it. I've seen her eat ketchup-dipped green beans and yogurt-dipped bacon on multiple occasions.

She knows very well how to use a spoon and fork, but it's hard to predict whether or not she'll be in the mood to use them with a given food. We don't push it that hard; we draw the line at letting her throw and smear food all over the place--that ends the meal--but if she wants to eat scrambled eggs with her hands, by all means. We do remind her that she has utensils and can use them.

"Show Rachel" has been a big phrase in our house lately. "Show Rachel how you eat cereal with a spoon!" often results in at least one perfect spoon-to-mouth bite.

Of course it's still far to early to tell what kind of eater Rachel will be, except to say that she's approaching it with gusto so far.

Eating is kind of a big deal in my side of the family. My dad's side is Cajun, and he's quite the chef. We had fabulous dinners growing up. His forte (no surprise) is Cajun and French cuisine, but he tackles other cultural cuisines quite eloquently. My mom is also an excellent cook, self-taught, having to live with my dad's constructive, if sometimes back-handed and sharp, criticism.

I once went on a vegetarian kick in college. Wow, I knew my parents would make fun of me for it. I didn't know they would take it so personally, as an affront to the values I grew up with. They seemed to get over it by the time I gave it up and returned to meat-eating.

Introducing my children to the delights of gumbo and jambalaya is a rite of passage in this family. Natalie loves both dishes. I remember letting her sip gumbo broth as tiny thing, older than six months but not by much. I hope Rachel is equally enthusiastic. By all indications, she will be.

Birthday overkill

Today was Natalie's 2nd birthday party. I'm sad to say I spent around $500 on it, invited lots of friends (too many for our small house), and instead of being joyful and fun, it was stressful. I pretty much hated every minute of it, hated myself for not anticipating the problems, for spending too much money, for overwhelming my two-year-old. She was in tears as I tried to get her to open presents. I had to just give up.

I hope my friends will forgive me for being a lousy party planner. I hope I can forgive myself.

Rob tells me people had fun, even Natalie. I take his word for it.

Sometimes my confidence as a mom gets shaken, and this is one of those times. No more parties, at least no more big parties, in this house. Martha Stewart I am not.

It's just pee.

Envisioning the family I would raise, I didn't realize how often that phrase would come up. Often enough, in fact, that my near-2-year old, Natalie, says it every day now, too. If it's not poop or vomit or something equally foul, it's probably just pee, and we and our belongings have been peed on enough now that we just don't care that much. Just wipe it up, throw it in the wash, etc.

Natalie drinks a LOT of liquids, for which I'm grateful; she's in good health and I never worry about her getting dehydrated, even when she's sick. But we use cloth diapers, oh, probably 75% of the time, not all of which are that great at keeping the pee from leaking out. In fairness, I'm probably not changing diapers as often as I should, now that I have two sets to change.

Even with disposable diapers, even overnight disposables, Natalie's pee makes it to the bedsheet at least 4 days a week, either in the morning or after nap. Rachel has been peeing the bed lately, too. So I'm doing even more laundry. It's a good thing I can find a way to enjoy folding clothes and hanging wet diapers on the back porch. (Note: Benefit of a drought in TX, those diapers dry really fast, maybe even faster than in the dryer.)

A friend mentioned the pee-in-the-tub phenomenon in her blogtoday. I don't worry about my kids drinking peed-in tub or pool water anymore. It's sterile, right? There's probably enough chlorine, etc, in the pool water to kill it anyway. I'm actually more concerned about their drinking that much chlorine. But not that concerned. So far, their little bodies are pretty good at determining when they need to spit up.

Oh, and it'll probably get worse before it gets better. We haven't started potty training yet. Dun dun dun...