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Somehow it all got really hard recently.
For a long time, it was damn, I am totally rocking this whole working-mom-of-two thing. Sure, it had its challenges, but I grabbed them by the balls, knocked them around, and sent them packing. I had it all under control(ish).
Then, about two months ago, everything just seemed to get really HARD. It started when Griffin stopped sleeping through the night (which he had only tenuously begun to do, as he still just wants to be in our bed attached to my person all night long and I will NEVER co-sleep again so help me) because we went out of town for a week at Thanksgiving and totally SCREWED his sleep training. Then he got a horrible week-long stomach bug and a lingering cold for umpteen weeks on end. That was December.
January has been a sassy little bitch of a month, too. It's always a busy time at work, and I've had sick kids all over the place - especially the Finster, who lately seems to fall victim to every damn germ that crosses his sweet path. Between his school, Carter's school, the playground, the library, etc. the poor kid is inundated with evil bugs that want to ravage his little self. So the new year began with the plague striking our family and one by one we all fell victim to heinous colds. Then Griffin's fifteen month ped check-up revealed a double ear infection and respiratory virus requiring puffer treatments (we had NO idea - "he's the happiest sickest baby" per our pediatrician), and on and on it went. He still isn't sleeping through, and every time we decide that TONIGHT is the night to sleep train, he begins vomiting out of nowhere (yes, that was last Friday - all over his room - cue a tummy bug and high fever all weekend) or the coughing and sniffling begins and it all goes to HELL. Not to mention that I've been feeling completely off due to lingering lady issues, and my GOD doesn't the world just profoundly suck when your vagina is sick? (TMI? Well, I don't believe in TMI, bitches. If you don't want to read about my vagina then you should not be on this blog).
Then there was the poo incident, which will go down in the annals of time as one of the most traumatic momming experiences of my life. Little G was on antibiotics for his ear infection, which causes upset tummy (despite the probiotics I was pumping into him), which in turn caused EXPLOSIVE diarrhea ALL OVER THE CAR SEAT. It seemed that everything in my car was coated in poo that morning. My entire baby was covered in poo. MY HANDS were covered in poo. His hands, sweater (one of my favorites, with the sweet rocking horse), pants, shirt and back were covered in poo. I didn’t even REALIZE it was poo – I thought we surely must have somehow spilled chili into the car seat. There was POO under my FINGERNAILS. I did not even have wipes, diapers OR a change of clothes for him, so I had to force him screaming into the carseat to ride in the SEAT OF POO from Carter’s school's parking lot (where this all happened, so I was this crazy poo-covered woman using random clothing items - pulled from a Goodwill donation bag found in the backseat - as rags to alternately wipe down her poo-coated child and the poo-coated seat while attempt to prevent said poo-child from racing away into oncoming traffic, all whilst fancy non-poo-covered parents walked their kids into the children's center - stay away from that lady, Little Johnny. She's not our kind) to Griffin's school, and then lead him by the hand (I could not pick him up for fear of POO) inside, where I used baby wipes to scrub his entire little body to remove the POO. I had to go home at lunch and switch out the car seat because there was POO EVERYWHERE – in the buckle, underneath the breastplate, coating the straps, on the seat. EVERYWHERE.
But I digress.
I am tired. Profoundly, deeply, incomprehensibly tired. Last Thursday I let Griffin cry it out and he slept ALL NIGHT for the first time since mid-November. It was like my whole world opened up in Technicolor - I was Dorothy in Oz, and everything was bright and shiny and hey, there's a huge lollipop, hand it over, munchkin person. I felt amazing. Then the next night the barfing began, and it all went to shit. Again.
My New Year's resolution was to do more for myself in 2013 - take time for me, nurture myself more, the same old shit I've been saying for three years, because no matter how hard you work to keep it all together, when you look in the mirror and see a tired, ragged face with flat, stringy hair, cracked hands and dry cuticles looking back at you, it's a bummer. I used to be pretty - or more importantly, feel pretty, feel like someone who deserved to treat herself well and nurture her body and mind. So I'm trying. I got my nails done - twice! I bought some new clothes. I went to lunch with friends instead of sitting in my office ALL DAY eating leftovers at noon. I am trying to carve out the ME time, because something needs to change.
For the past few weeks, I feel like I have been a stellar employee and a crap mom. Kicking ass at the office, and grasping at straws at home. I am edgy with my kids, I've lost my temper with them - which I rarely have before - muttering curse words under my breath out of sheer angry desperation while trying to get Griffin back to sleep (for the 80 zillionth time in one night). I don't like this me.
I am pretty sure that I will stop feeling like utter crap once the sickness goes away, the baby starts sleeping through, and I am no longer an exhausted shell of a woman with a 25-lb toddler using me as a human pacifier all night long. I'm still baking, so that's reassuring. If I ever stop baking, you will know something is terribly, terribly wrong. And I'm getting more organized at home, which feels good. But my god, so tired...
I will write another post soon (before another seven months goes by) which is not like this. I will write about my beautiful, perfect, sweet-natured boys and my truly awesome husband, and I will show pictures of their lovely faces to document them for all time on this little site, and in thirty years I will look back and read these words and remember how insane this all was. And I'm sure I will laugh at my silly 33-year-old self - oh girl, that's nothing. I've been covered in poo more times than I can count - as I get in my flying car to go have a lunchdate with my fabulous 60-something girlfriends and reminisce about when our children were small and we were very, very tired.
