The day in a life of a mommy with two
I use to think being a parent of one was really hard. But that is because it was so new to me. The whole experience, and the uncertainty of what to expect. But boy did I not realize juggling two kids is a whole new adventure in itself. It makes being a parent of one look like peanuts. I have had multiple people tell me once you have more than one its a whole new ballgame. And are they right! I use to think the newborn stage was hard, because of the constant feeding and lack of sleep involved, but toddler stage is ten times worse! And now that I have Holly to take care of as a newborn, it seems so much easier. Taking care of Grant on the other hand is hard, especially when Holly requires attention and I can't give it to Grant.
Today I had one of those parenting days where I am glad I'm going back to work. Yes I said it. Don't get me wrong I'm really sad and will miss my kids dearly when I go back to work. I'm dreading it and my leave is going by so fast. But today was one of those days where I am reassuring myself, that I would hate it if I had to be a stay at home mom. And it makes me respect stay at home moms times twenty! Being a stay at home mom is not easy, it definitely is a full time job, and you have very little time to yourself. You don't get a lunch break let alone a bathroom break. I've been blessed with Matt being able to take 6 weeks leave. He got a full two weeks off and then for 4 weeks only had to work a total of 12 hours each week. So I haven't had too many days managing two kids on my own. Matt just returned to work full time on Thursday, which means I have to juggle two kids by myself all day long. Today was a sneak peak of those adventures, and many more to come.
I thought it would be fun to have an uncensored overview of my day today. (Judge me if you like on my parenting stills, but its not easy with two) A play by play so to speak:
6:50 am- Woke up on the couch with Holly on my lap with my back and neck killing me (this has sadly been a nightly occurrence. Grant wakes up in the middle of night, and ends up in our bed, so I can't lay down and feed Holly in our bed, because he'll kick her or bump her in his sleep. He moves around so much in his sleep. So I go downstairs, sit on the couch, nurse her, and try to keep myself awake with the kindle or something else, but end up falling asleep before I even open up the kindle. And I usually wake up two-three hours later with Holly wanting to nurse again, before I go back to bed) Feed Holly
7:10 am- Matt wakes up and so does Grant, I take Holly upstairs and lay in bed to get a small capnap before I start my day.
7:30 am- Matt wakes me up so I can get Grant his milk and feed him some breakfast.
7:45 am- Matt leaves for work, Grant plays with his new Christmas toys. Matt tells me to put Grant's big wheel toy that we got him for Christmas down in the basement, since it is way to big. We didn't realize when we got it how big it was for Grant as you can see he has room to grow in it:
8:15 am Holly wakes up, I nurse her, Grant comes up to me, and I download a new toddler app for him to play with. He loves it, and gets really impatient when it doesn't work his way. I discover that he took all the stickers that Matt put on his big wheels last night. And the stickers are all over his sleeper. I'm only able to savage a few of them and I put them back on, and finally put his big wheels bike in the basement, so he can't mess with it again.
9:00 am- Give Grant breakfast and I play around with my new shiney single cup coffee maker I got for Christmas, enjoying some coffee.
9:30 am- I lay Holly on her little playmat since she is wide awake. Grant goes over and lays right next to her, and is so sweet. (As you can see in the pic below) Though while I am putting my camera back, I find Grant biting Holly's hand. Poor thing starts crying. Luckily there were no marks or sores from his bite. Reason 542 why I can't trust Grant near Holly. Sweet one minute, dangerous the next.
10:00 am- go upstairs to get ready for the day. Turn on Sesame Street. (Grant's favorite show) Grant cutely lays in our bed, with the blankets over him and laying his head on my pillow. I was going to get dress but decide its a perfect opportunity to clean up our bedrooms and dust our furniture, since things were getting so messy in there.
11:00 am- After cleaning things up and nursing Holly, decide to finally start getting ready. I get Grant and Holly dressed. Grant starts trying to crawl in Holly's pack and play, so I bring Grant to the bathroom with me so he doesn't mess with his sister (still can't trust Grant and Holly in the same room with each other without supervision. I never know what Grant will decide to do to her.)
11:15- Grant gets bored with being in the bathroom with me and runs away with my toothbrush, that I've realized needs to be replaced anyways, so I just let him run off with it. He goes downstairs, and I'm still getting ready. I don't feel like fighting with him, since I know he won't stay in the bathroom with me. If I leave him in the hallway or in his room he'll just cry. And I figured he could entertain himself with his new Christmas toys.
11:20 am- I should have know something was wrong, because it was too quiet downstairs. When I go downstairs I find Grant like this:
All the new toys he has and he decides to randomly go in the lazy susan (which is the only cabinet we can't really child lock since the way its made) and take multiple things out of it. (which thank God he didn't break some of the glass bottles getting them out). One of the things he decides to get out are the bread crumbs, which as you can see he dumps all over the place, and spreads it in the living room on the rug with his toothbrush. I just want to get going, and I don't feel like dealing with this mess, so I leave it like that and decide I'll clean it up during his nap. Because I know if he is present while I try to clean it, he'll just make a bigger mess.
11:50 am: Finally get out the door. Grant has to take his Scout with him. I make the mistake of putting Holly in the car first. After I'm done, I turn my head back at Grant to horrifically discover him at the edge of our driveway going on the road. I sprint as fast as I could, luckily there were no cars coming by. He has an obsession with wanting to go out in the road. Parenting Lesson #233- But the mobile child in the car first. Always! (I know I really should have known that by now)
Noon: I put Holly in a moby wrap. Learned from last Fast food outing, that trying to carry food, a baby in a car seat, and hold a toddler's hand is nearly impossible. Having two hands makes things easier, and oh how I'm loving babywearing the second time around! We walk into Mcdonalds, and I regret even going in there since the whole place is packed and an entire daycare is there since they decided to take all the kids on a field trip to Mcdonalds.
12:45- Grant takes forever to eat, he ends up eating most of his food, but he is too busy people watching that it slows him down eating. Holly stays snuggly in the moby wrap. I take Grant to the playland area, and its packed. There is nowhere for me to even sit. I end up putting my stuff on a miniature table meant for small children and stand around there. There is a area meant for smaller children, but Grant is not too interested in that and keeps trying to get to the giant slides and tubes meant for kids 3 and up. Its hard trying to stop Grant from doing that when I have Holly on me in a wrap. Grant ends up climbing in the tubes before I can stop him. I keep telling him to get down, but he just keeps crawling further up. I have my mom panic meltdown, and start freaking out. (When I told this story to my husband, he didn't think it was that big of a deal, but to me at the time it felt like it was) Grant kept crawling up higher up in the tubes and I couldn't see him. I guess why I was so worried is because there were so many other big kids, and like 3-4 of them would crawl up on a tube at the same time. I was nervous that they were going to trampled over Grant because he is so tiny. And I was afraid he was going to get lost since some of the tubes dead-end, and he was going to be scared. So I am going into full mommy panic mode, thinking I may have evacuate the play area and send out a search and rescue for Grant, and then minutes later Grant come down the giant spiral slide happy as could be with a big smile on his face. He runs towards to the start of the tubes again, but I grab him and want to leave because all the children there is giving me anxiety, and I'm afraid he is going to get hurt.
12:55pm- I grab our stuff, and turn my head and can't find Grant. I have a quick panic attack to find him climbing up the slide, climbing over two bigger boys who are sitting at the end of the slide.
12:57pm- Grant throws himself down on the floor near the exit door because he is made that we left.
1:30pm- We go to Walmart, and Holly who has been sleeping the whole time wakes up. She is very fussy so I have to hold her. I discover that maneuvering a cart with Grant in it, and holding Holly isn't easy to do. I end up pushing the cart on the side to move it more easily, but it takes up a lot of space and doing that makes it hard not to run into people.
2:00pm- Holly is crying, I had to put Grant down for his nap since he fell asleep in the car. I hope Grant takes a long nap so I can clean up his huge mess. I go to feed Holly.
2:30pm- Grant wakes up, and I'm still nursing Holly. Grant is really crabby, and is bawling his head off. He really should have taken a longer nap! I really need to clean up the mess, so I leave Grant upstairs let him have his meltdown while I clean up the mess, Holly starts crying because I put her down. I can never win.
3:00 pm-Grant finally calms down, and I put on a movie. I use that time to nap a mini 15 minute nap on the couch with Holly on me. Grant wake me up and gets my attention by biting me on the hand because he wants a snack.
5:00 pm-Matt comes home from work, Grant is playing with his toys, and gets mad at Matt because he keeps throwing his crayons (that are those kind that are like different shapes and are bigger). Grant chucks a crayon hitting Matt in the corner of his eye. (Ended up causing a little bruise.)
6:00 pm-We order some takeout, I'm relieved that I don't have to worry about making dinner. I eagerly volunteer to pick up the food, just to have a nice quiet drive kid free, and jamming to my music.
7:00 pm- Matt goes in the workshop to work on a present he is making for his mom. Grant keeps trying to climb on the counter where our barstool is. He ends up knocking over and breaking my snowman that had a Christmas counter on it.
7:30 pm- I give Grant a bath, while nursing Holly. I feel great with my multitasking skills.
8:15 pm- Grant is very tried since he only had a half hour nap, and when I put him to bed, he actually goes to sleep very quickly. (Which is a rarity considering it sometimes can take up to over an hour to put him to bed.)
8:15 pm- I spend the next hour cleaning up the living room since it looked like a tornado hit it, and I clean up the kitchen. Its my only time to really clean things up. Use the rest of the night to relax and finally start my blog.
Survived another day of fun!
As you can see Grant is a lot of work. And constantly nursing Holly, makes it hard to tend to Grant. I know it's probably not going to get any easier when Holly become mobile. I will say I impress myself with everything I have to deal with on a daily basis. Parenting is definitely an adventure!
Today I had one of those parenting days where I am glad I'm going back to work. Yes I said it. Don't get me wrong I'm really sad and will miss my kids dearly when I go back to work. I'm dreading it and my leave is going by so fast. But today was one of those days where I am reassuring myself, that I would hate it if I had to be a stay at home mom. And it makes me respect stay at home moms times twenty! Being a stay at home mom is not easy, it definitely is a full time job, and you have very little time to yourself. You don't get a lunch break let alone a bathroom break. I've been blessed with Matt being able to take 6 weeks leave. He got a full two weeks off and then for 4 weeks only had to work a total of 12 hours each week. So I haven't had too many days managing two kids on my own. Matt just returned to work full time on Thursday, which means I have to juggle two kids by myself all day long. Today was a sneak peak of those adventures, and many more to come.
I thought it would be fun to have an uncensored overview of my day today. (Judge me if you like on my parenting stills, but its not easy with two) A play by play so to speak:
6:50 am- Woke up on the couch with Holly on my lap with my back and neck killing me (this has sadly been a nightly occurrence. Grant wakes up in the middle of night, and ends up in our bed, so I can't lay down and feed Holly in our bed, because he'll kick her or bump her in his sleep. He moves around so much in his sleep. So I go downstairs, sit on the couch, nurse her, and try to keep myself awake with the kindle or something else, but end up falling asleep before I even open up the kindle. And I usually wake up two-three hours later with Holly wanting to nurse again, before I go back to bed) Feed Holly
7:10 am- Matt wakes up and so does Grant, I take Holly upstairs and lay in bed to get a small capnap before I start my day.
7:30 am- Matt wakes me up so I can get Grant his milk and feed him some breakfast.
7:45 am- Matt leaves for work, Grant plays with his new Christmas toys. Matt tells me to put Grant's big wheel toy that we got him for Christmas down in the basement, since it is way to big. We didn't realize when we got it how big it was for Grant as you can see he has room to grow in it:
8:15 am Holly wakes up, I nurse her, Grant comes up to me, and I download a new toddler app for him to play with. He loves it, and gets really impatient when it doesn't work his way. I discover that he took all the stickers that Matt put on his big wheels last night. And the stickers are all over his sleeper. I'm only able to savage a few of them and I put them back on, and finally put his big wheels bike in the basement, so he can't mess with it again.
9:00 am- Give Grant breakfast and I play around with my new shiney single cup coffee maker I got for Christmas, enjoying some coffee.
9:30 am- I lay Holly on her little playmat since she is wide awake. Grant goes over and lays right next to her, and is so sweet. (As you can see in the pic below) Though while I am putting my camera back, I find Grant biting Holly's hand. Poor thing starts crying. Luckily there were no marks or sores from his bite. Reason 542 why I can't trust Grant near Holly. Sweet one minute, dangerous the next.
10:00 am- go upstairs to get ready for the day. Turn on Sesame Street. (Grant's favorite show) Grant cutely lays in our bed, with the blankets over him and laying his head on my pillow. I was going to get dress but decide its a perfect opportunity to clean up our bedrooms and dust our furniture, since things were getting so messy in there.
11:00 am- After cleaning things up and nursing Holly, decide to finally start getting ready. I get Grant and Holly dressed. Grant starts trying to crawl in Holly's pack and play, so I bring Grant to the bathroom with me so he doesn't mess with his sister (still can't trust Grant and Holly in the same room with each other without supervision. I never know what Grant will decide to do to her.)
11:15- Grant gets bored with being in the bathroom with me and runs away with my toothbrush, that I've realized needs to be replaced anyways, so I just let him run off with it. He goes downstairs, and I'm still getting ready. I don't feel like fighting with him, since I know he won't stay in the bathroom with me. If I leave him in the hallway or in his room he'll just cry. And I figured he could entertain himself with his new Christmas toys.
11:20 am- I should have know something was wrong, because it was too quiet downstairs. When I go downstairs I find Grant like this:
All the new toys he has and he decides to randomly go in the lazy susan (which is the only cabinet we can't really child lock since the way its made) and take multiple things out of it. (which thank God he didn't break some of the glass bottles getting them out). One of the things he decides to get out are the bread crumbs, which as you can see he dumps all over the place, and spreads it in the living room on the rug with his toothbrush. I just want to get going, and I don't feel like dealing with this mess, so I leave it like that and decide I'll clean it up during his nap. Because I know if he is present while I try to clean it, he'll just make a bigger mess.
11:50 am: Finally get out the door. Grant has to take his Scout with him. I make the mistake of putting Holly in the car first. After I'm done, I turn my head back at Grant to horrifically discover him at the edge of our driveway going on the road. I sprint as fast as I could, luckily there were no cars coming by. He has an obsession with wanting to go out in the road. Parenting Lesson #233- But the mobile child in the car first. Always! (I know I really should have known that by now)
Noon: I put Holly in a moby wrap. Learned from last Fast food outing, that trying to carry food, a baby in a car seat, and hold a toddler's hand is nearly impossible. Having two hands makes things easier, and oh how I'm loving babywearing the second time around! We walk into Mcdonalds, and I regret even going in there since the whole place is packed and an entire daycare is there since they decided to take all the kids on a field trip to Mcdonalds.
12:45- Grant takes forever to eat, he ends up eating most of his food, but he is too busy people watching that it slows him down eating. Holly stays snuggly in the moby wrap. I take Grant to the playland area, and its packed. There is nowhere for me to even sit. I end up putting my stuff on a miniature table meant for small children and stand around there. There is a area meant for smaller children, but Grant is not too interested in that and keeps trying to get to the giant slides and tubes meant for kids 3 and up. Its hard trying to stop Grant from doing that when I have Holly on me in a wrap. Grant ends up climbing in the tubes before I can stop him. I keep telling him to get down, but he just keeps crawling further up. I have my mom panic meltdown, and start freaking out. (When I told this story to my husband, he didn't think it was that big of a deal, but to me at the time it felt like it was) Grant kept crawling up higher up in the tubes and I couldn't see him. I guess why I was so worried is because there were so many other big kids, and like 3-4 of them would crawl up on a tube at the same time. I was nervous that they were going to trampled over Grant because he is so tiny. And I was afraid he was going to get lost since some of the tubes dead-end, and he was going to be scared. So I am going into full mommy panic mode, thinking I may have evacuate the play area and send out a search and rescue for Grant, and then minutes later Grant come down the giant spiral slide happy as could be with a big smile on his face. He runs towards to the start of the tubes again, but I grab him and want to leave because all the children there is giving me anxiety, and I'm afraid he is going to get hurt.
12:55pm- I grab our stuff, and turn my head and can't find Grant. I have a quick panic attack to find him climbing up the slide, climbing over two bigger boys who are sitting at the end of the slide.
12:57pm- Grant throws himself down on the floor near the exit door because he is made that we left.
1:30pm- We go to Walmart, and Holly who has been sleeping the whole time wakes up. She is very fussy so I have to hold her. I discover that maneuvering a cart with Grant in it, and holding Holly isn't easy to do. I end up pushing the cart on the side to move it more easily, but it takes up a lot of space and doing that makes it hard not to run into people.
2:00pm- Holly is crying, I had to put Grant down for his nap since he fell asleep in the car. I hope Grant takes a long nap so I can clean up his huge mess. I go to feed Holly.
2:30pm- Grant wakes up, and I'm still nursing Holly. Grant is really crabby, and is bawling his head off. He really should have taken a longer nap! I really need to clean up the mess, so I leave Grant upstairs let him have his meltdown while I clean up the mess, Holly starts crying because I put her down. I can never win.
3:00 pm-Grant finally calms down, and I put on a movie. I use that time to nap a mini 15 minute nap on the couch with Holly on me. Grant wake me up and gets my attention by biting me on the hand because he wants a snack.
5:00 pm-Matt comes home from work, Grant is playing with his toys, and gets mad at Matt because he keeps throwing his crayons (that are those kind that are like different shapes and are bigger). Grant chucks a crayon hitting Matt in the corner of his eye. (Ended up causing a little bruise.)
6:00 pm-We order some takeout, I'm relieved that I don't have to worry about making dinner. I eagerly volunteer to pick up the food, just to have a nice quiet drive kid free, and jamming to my music.
7:00 pm- Matt goes in the workshop to work on a present he is making for his mom. Grant keeps trying to climb on the counter where our barstool is. He ends up knocking over and breaking my snowman that had a Christmas counter on it.
7:30 pm- I give Grant a bath, while nursing Holly. I feel great with my multitasking skills.
8:15 pm- Grant is very tried since he only had a half hour nap, and when I put him to bed, he actually goes to sleep very quickly. (Which is a rarity considering it sometimes can take up to over an hour to put him to bed.)
8:15 pm- I spend the next hour cleaning up the living room since it looked like a tornado hit it, and I clean up the kitchen. Its my only time to really clean things up. Use the rest of the night to relax and finally start my blog.
Survived another day of fun!
As you can see Grant is a lot of work. And constantly nursing Holly, makes it hard to tend to Grant. I know it's probably not going to get any easier when Holly become mobile. I will say I impress myself with everything I have to deal with on a daily basis. Parenting is definitely an adventure!
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