It just feels like there is not enough coffee in the world lately. I feel like I've hit some kind of a sleep wall. I can't really figure it out, because the babies aren't sleeping any less than they were before. Suddenly I am just ten times more exhausted than I have been all summer and oops-it's now fall I guess. OK then.
I know it's really blurry but I just couldn't resist. Did someone say fall? Pumpkins?
I keep hearing different things. Six months is the magic mark when the sleep gets better. Or is it four? Since the babies were technically premature, arriving almost a full month early, they're not really almost four months old. Blah blah blah. I know, boring. And it's not like I haven't done this baby/no sleep thing before (although, not with the two babies thing). I know that it gets better. But when you're in the middle of it and your body aches like you have the worst hangover of your life for days and weeks on end? It does not feel like it will get better.
And last night was the season premiere of one of my favorite shows and I (pathetically) looked forward to it a little bit all day. I DVRed it and Erin and I sat down with our little dinner after all the kids were in bed and it felt just a little bit like old times (i.e. pre-babies/aka when I could hope to sort of sleep through the night/finish a sentence without feeling brain dead/wear pants without elastic). And guess what? I couldn't even keep my eyes open. Sleeping for just two hours (which I can usually hope to do once the babies go down for the night between 8 and 9) was more appealing than my favorite show, the show that could almost always put me in a good mood when I needed a little "pick-me-up." Last night? I just found it annoying/like it was trying too hard.
It doesn't help that today dawned especially early. Side note: do the days even begin? They just all seem to blend together lately as days are apt to do when they "end" at 10:30 pm and start up again at 12:30, 2:30, 4:30 (I'm looking at you Harry). But this morning poor Erin had to leave the house at 4:30 (to work an unusually early shift). Leo (in our bed of course) shot up like firecracker when he heard the front door close. "Where's Mama?" he asked, urgently.
And I groaned. I had one baby in my arms in the midst of nursing and the other blessedly (for now) sleeping in the crib. The plan was to get the nursing baby (which one was it, anyway? Like it mattered) back to sleep for at least another hour or two. And I urged Leo to go back to sleep with us. But he would have nothing of it. Thank goodness he managed to amuse himself for the next two hours without me as I crawled back to bed and prayed that he didn't A) escape out of the front or back door (he's recently learned how to use keys in locks, oy) or B) cook himself breakfast ala scrambled eggs on the gas stove (yes, it's been done/attempted by him. Don't ask).
The happy ending here is, my alarm went off at 6:30 and the babies stayed asleep and I went downstairs to find Leo happily playing in the basement and chattering to himself. When he saw me he demanded "Cat in the Hat" and "pizza." I showered him with praise for letting Mommy go back to sleep and I'll let you figure out which request I complied with.
And just in time for all these glorious classes for Ellie, she caught some kind of icky coughing bug that will surely elicit the Bad Mom Stare if we try to go anywhere today. Ellie woke me up in the middle of the night ("I just want my Mommy!" is there anything more pitiful?). I rubbed her back and listened to her seal bark and finally, when I couldn't take it anymore I rifled through the medicine cabinet to find the medication she was prescribed for last year's bout of croup, hoping that it had not turned poisonous in the last fourteen months.
Even when I'm so tired my eyes are watering, it feels good to leave the house. To do something. Yesterday I took Ellie to the mall to get her bangs cut (no more cute short bob for her, she's announced, she wants to "grow pig tails"). We ended up at the mall's indoor playground where we ran into one of Ellie's friends from preschool. Ellie ran around and played and squealed for a good hour and I got to have a bit of adult conversation. But today I think we need to stay in. I'll do my best from keeping Ellie from coughing the plague all over the babies and I'll be putting on another pot of coffee.
Someday, I'm going to miss all of this. This too shall pass, and all of that. But right now? I just need some sleep.
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