I don't know how to live like this.
I love that 4.5 year old girl in the bathroom, talking to herself while she plays with toys, telling me she wants five more minutes, but already I do not understand her. Already, I feel like I have failed her in at least one important way. (She will not poop in the toilet. This sounds simple. This sounds easy. If I told you that other than that, she is smart, creative, hilarious, affectionate, and compassionate (and of course also stubborn, often whiny, and weird), you would think, maybe, that the failure to poop in the toilet was minor. Maybe it is. And yet most days it is a huge thing, overshadowing all else, bringing an excellent day to a crashing disappointment, making a bad day worse. I go from calm patience to angry ranting and disgust in a heartbeat. She is failing us. We are failing her. I am failing.)
I love that almost 5 month old baby in the crib, sleeping quietly at the moment, rolled over onto her stomach in her baby straitjacketed swaddle. And yet I am already dreading bedtime. I can not possibly go to bed early enough to get enough sleep, not with the number of times Annabel will wake me up in the night. Not since I need to go into the office tomorrow. Already, these days, I tend to only take showers every other day, hoarding the extra 15 minutes that a shower (and waiting for hair to dry) would take, using it for sleep, or for 15 minutes of time all by myself. I took a shower today. If tonight is like the other nights, she will wake up at 10 or so, when I go to bed. She will nurse, and I will, at least that time, enjoy the weight of her little warm chubby body, the feel of her hands, opening and closing on whatever part of me she can reach (doing some weird but not altogether unpleasant massage of my chest), if she can get her hand out of the confines of the swaddling blanket. Then I will put her back to bed, and lie down (the feeling I have each time I put her back in her crib, the feeling of impending blessed much-needed sleep, is (are!) the best part(s!) of each night), and go almost immediately to sleep. But she will wake up again around 2 hours (or, if I'm very lucky, 3 hours) after I have gone to sleep, and I will pick her up and bring her to bed with me, lying back against the pillow, eyes closed, dozing, wishing for the time to pass quickly. Twenty minutes or so after she's woken, she will be done. I will burp her, kiss her soft fuzzy head, put her back in the crib, and return - ahhhh - to bed, pulling the covers up high over my shoulder, tucking them under my chin. I will look at the clock, see that it is 12:54 or 1:36, and mentally calculate when she might wake up, and how much sleep that will be. Most likely, she will wake me up again, 2 (or if I'm lucky 3) hours later. And again. And again. Last night she woke me up at midnight, 2, 4, and 6.
On Monday of this week I had what I would call a minor breakdown. In front of two co-workers (luckily, my two closest friends at work), I started to cry. They closed the door, told me it would be ok, gave me names of therapists to talk to, asked if there was anything they could do. Mostly, they listened, and they let me cry, and when I apologized, they refused to accept my apology. Afterward, not only later on that day, but stretching all the way to today, Wednesday, I felt (I feel) better, as if a dam had broken. The pressure has been relieved.
I started writing this on Sunday, and I have not gotten a chance to continue until today (Wednesday), which I think is probably symptomatic of part of my problem: I have very little time that is not spent trying to sleep, taking care of the children, commuting to and from work, working at a job which pays me less and less (in addition to the pay cut from the beginning of this month, I'll pay more than $100 more a month for insurance in the new year; and of course there was no raise at the beginning of 2008) and which simultaneously requires more and more (not only more time, but more rules, more compliance, more bureaucratic hoops to jump through). I am worried about my job. I am worried about money. I am worried, a little bit, about what we'll do for Christmas this year - it will be fine, I know it will be fine, and yet I want it to also be good; I want to find a way to make sure that I enjoy this first Christmas with Annabel and fifth one with Katie.
Even now, right now, I have had to stop at least five times (since about 3 paragraphs up) to go comfort the baby, nurse the baby, replace the baby's pacifier, wipe up the baby's spit up.
In phone calls at work, I forget what I'm saying in the mdidle of saying it. I transpose digits in people's phone numbers. I am easily distracted from what I'm working on, flitting from one thing to another, rarely finishing anything. It's hard to follow my own train of thought for more than a few minutes at a time.
I am in tears at least once a day. And the real, underlying problem is that I feel like I am trying to do so many things, and that I am succeeding at none of them. I feel like I'm failing.
And yet right now, on Wednesday, a few days after I started this, on a day when I got to "sleep in" until 8 (after having been woken up 4 times), I feel optimistic. I feel better than I have felt in days, maybe weeks. I feel like I can actually make it through another day, and another day after that. (This lovely poem helped, I am pretty sure.)
I actually daydream about posting here often. I have an idea that I will start posting regularly again, and that what I write will be work I'm proud of. I don't know when that will be, or even, I'll admit, whether that will be at all.
I do plug along taking pictures, at least, posting them to Flickr and captioning them when I can.
I do stop and smell Annabel's head and rub my cheek against her brand new downy fuzzy hair and put my finger out so that she will grab it in her hand and squeeze tightly. I accept it as her embrace.
I do stop to look at Katie's gorgeous perfect face, her bright eyes, her mischievous smile. I watch her body grow leaner and longer, seemingly on a daily basis. (Since April she has gained 2 pounds and grown over 2 inches.) I am amazed at the way she is so much her own person, not my baby, not dependent on me or Geoff for ideas or for her sense of humor or for her likes and dislikes.
I know that no matter how difficult each day is right now, I will miss this time when it is gone. I will miss the people that my children are today: the way Annabel lights up when she sees either mine or Geoff's face, and the way she is learning to blow raspberries; the way Katie asks me every night to sing her a new song that she doesn't already know, and also some other songs that she already does (right now our regulars are: Edelweiss, Over the Rainbow, Til There Was You, Goodnight My Someone, Where Is Love?, Some Enchanted Evening, How to Handle a Woman, and the Beatles' "I Will" - I am running out of songs that I have memorized - I actually had to research the verses for "Some Enchanted Evening"), and wants me to tickle her while we sing.
Today was ok. Tomorrow might be better. The only way to do this is day by day by day, I guess. I think. That is the only way to live like this. I'm trying.
