Monday, May 20, 2013

we survived the first night!


last night was the first time in the nearly five weeks of the girls' lives that i've been solo at bedtime. i was lucky enough to have anthony home for almost 2 1/2 weeks and my mom here for almost 2 1/2 weeks as well. yesterday, mom went home and daddy had to work. dum, dum, dummmmm...

we had a busy, busy morning of breakfast out, dropping gma at the airport, playing at a new park, and lunch out (we really needed to go grocery shopping :/ ). miraculously all the babes slept at the same time and i got in a two hour nap! what?! great start.

nolan helping me and lilah down the slide. note: sliding upon nolan's request. holding baby because she JUUUSSSTTT fell asleep after nursing and i didn't want to risk waking her by laying her down.

nolan, lilah and i woke up a little before 4pm and we colored and played legos until a little before 5. thankfully, we had leftover pizza for dinner (again...needed to grocery shop), so i didn't have that ball to juggle. alice was kind enough to sleep through our playtime, dinner and bath that became a bath for two after lilah spit up all over herself (and me...i wasn't so lucky with the bath. doh). nolan was surprisingly generous in the sharing of his bath space. whew. pretty sure alice sleeping thru was a gift directly from god.

pardon the odd coloring of the pic. poor lilah and me covered in gnarly spit up. ewww.
lilah and nolan in the tub...first sibling bathies!! he even offered to give her a turn with his toys. awe...

right as we were finishing, alice woke up and the real trickiness began. one baby was newly bathed, coconut oiled up, diapered, dressed and slightly angry. one baby just woke up from a monster nap, needed a diaper change, was hungry and was rather angry. one toddler was sopping wet from the tub, naked, and thankfully not angry at all. cue: curious george. :) by 6:45pm everyone was ready for bed (poor alice also spit up all over herself, but like me, missed out on the bath. she did get a nice clean new set of jammies though) and we were in the bedroom for tandem milkies and one million books as i attempted to get the girls to sleep before laying down with bug.

poor alice. after nearly two weeks of no spit up, both girls doused themselves (and me) on the same night, within an hour of each other. hmmm...

it went a little something like this from that point:

alice fell asleep. lilah woke her up. nolan fell asleep. lilah fell asleep. i escaped the room with alice. lilah woke up. girls cried. i walked and danced and bounced and in the end nursed, and nursed, and nursed...and nursed them. alice fell asleep some time around 9:00pm. i ushered her off the amazing "brestfriend" nursing pillow and onto a safe, tucked in corner of the couch. lilah fell asleep around 9:30pm and i took her into the room. when i laid her down, she woke a bit, so i snuggled up next to her to help her fall back asleep. i instantly passed out. woke up around 11:00pm confused and panicked as i didn't know where my other baby was. brain started working. got ready for bed. moved alice to the bed. fell asleep. woke up to something around 12:00am, looked over at the little bed to see if anthony was home (he wasn't) and was again instantly confused and panicked as nolan wasn't in bed and i couldn't figure out where he was. uhm...yeah...he was behind me, on the big bed...laying half on my back. it's amazing how dumb one can be when they are exhausted. ha! he fell back asleep and anthony must have got home shortly after that because the next time i woke up, nolan was all cuddled up with daddy on the little bed again. the rest of the night was a juggling act of nursing, changing, and burping. i never actually got out of bed (thank god for co-sleeping), but i did sleep in a relatively sat up position from 12:00-6:00am as the girls seem to have a bit of reflux and i can't nurse them laying down...and i fall asleep as they are resting elevated to help with digestion. and then nolan, the girls and i all got up for the day.


at 7:50pm, i text this pic to anthony with the caption, "two down". i thought i was home free. jinxed it. ha!
nolan and alice lovies this morning. LOVE!
overview: i ate. nolan ate. the girls nursed for hours on end. nolan and one girl even got a bath! i changed a minimum of 7 diapers (multiple containing poop). the house was relatively picked up before nolan went to bed and i managed to get both diaper bags restocked for today's activities. i got each daughter to sleep at least three times before it really stuck. i didn't get the dishes done or remember to take my vitamins before bed. i thought i lost two children at separate times, but in fact everyone is alive, home and well. and aparently i got enough sleep last night to sit here and write a blog rather than napping with my sleeping girls while daddy and nolan are at the grocery store (yay food!). or i'm just that crazy.


what i'm missing out on while writing this blog. whoops. poor decision making skills. at least daddy is off today and tomorrow. yay!

so, we officially made it through. i'm pretty sure they took it easy on me and that there are much worse days to come, but hopefully there will be better ones too. i thought to myself yesterday before this all began that i just need to be broken...to hit a really terrible low where everyone survives, but nothing else gets done for days. that way, i can curb my expectations and make it so i'm ok if i only accomplish one thing in a day or even no things in a day. but, truthfully, that sounds just awful. i want to be able to do it all. i think to some degree i still expect to be able to do it all. this could be a very tricky, possibly rough road i'm about to travel. wish me luck.

just after i finished writing this blog and posting it, i saw this image in my "news feed".
dear facebook, you always have a way of speaking right to me. thank you for that...and thank you for this. xo