BrooklynGirl

Still Here

Hey--Have any of you seen the parenting manual that explains how this is all supposed to work?  I seem to have misplaced my copy...or maybe it's just buried under the laundry,  the copious amounts of laundry.  I don't know how adding one small human to the family increased the amount of laundry four-fold, but I swear that's what seems to have happened. Anyway, I digress.

We're hanging in--survived the business trip and everything.  The most challenging part of the day--business trip or no--is the ramp up to bedtime for The Boy, those magical hours between 5:30 and 7:30 when The Boy eats dinner, has a bath, reads some stories, and (the good Lord willing) goes to bed.  I try to nurse The Girl into unconsciousness for that period, but this tends to be her fussy time of day as well so I'm generally shuttling between the two.  Adorably (and sometimes annoyingly) The Boy just can't bear to hear The Girl fuss for even a minute so if he hears her, he stops whatever he's doing to point out "She crying.  She crying.  She crying" at louder and louder volume until I resolve the situation.      

Oh,  and guess what?  The Boy's talking.  I didn't mention it here because typing it would have made the situation real, but he wasn't saying too much.  When I stopped to think  about the (not) talking thing, I was torn between giving him the space to sort this out on his own and giving him the help he might need.  My time frame for pushing the intervention button was 2 years, but suddenly at 22 months the floodgates opened. 

As he skipped walking and progressed right to running, so he has bypassed individual words and moved right into sentences, most of which begin with, "I wanna."  He was pretty good at pantomiming his desires before, but this is a whole new level of astonishing. 

How are you?

Hot Hot Hot

Good Lord, it's hot. 

When I was expecting The Boy (birthday in late August), I was hot and  sweaty and hugely uncomfortable, but I took refuge in a heavily air conditioned movie theater around the corner from my apartment whenever possible.

Toddlers seem much less interested in staying inside with the a/c blasting--even Dora loses it's charm after awhile.  So, eventually, you have to  go outside.  With a sweaty coal-burning furnace infant strapped to your chest.  And that's all kinds of fun. 

Next up: my husband's first business trip of the two child era.

Coming Clean

I haven't been entirely forthright about something.  While it's true that my husband went back to work last week, I haven't been completely on my own in the parenting department because you see, well, we still have the sitter and she's working more or less the same hours she worked when I had a job.

This is a luxury we can't afford forever.  However, somewhat hilariously, when both sets of grandparents came to meet The Girl and they witnessed The Boy in his natural environment instead of the carefully chaperoned best behavior enforced by two parents working in concert that they were accustomed to seeing, they pressed money into our hands so we could keep the sitter a little bit longer.

It's a perfect arrangement: she comes to pick up The Boy in the morning and amuses him until I go pick him up in the afternoon.  The Girl and I are left alone in the apartment to nurse and nap and feel guilty about the fact that we still can't find the time or energy to clean the bathroom.

Having the sitter feels a little like cheating, frankly.

But not having her is unimaginable.