life with two

Okay, so here's my post about the rest of it. Or whatever I end up typing. Neil and Abigail are at church right now (the doctor told me to not go this week and after hearing there's chicken pox running around the ward we decided wisdom was the better part of valor) and Juliet is sleeping so I have loooots of time.

First of all, the whole adjusting to two kids thing is interesting. I confess that I'm not nearly as patient with Abigail as I wish I was; I keep making unfair comparisons in my mind between the quiet little slumbering newborn and the crazy screeching two-year-old. We've both been making an effort to have some down time with Abigail every day, but she's understandably wound-up and has been spending a LOT of time just screaming things like "No! My mommy! My daddy! No! No! No!" at the top of her lungs so it's pretty difficult for me to stay calm and rational. Ergh. I think it's also been difficult for her to have her world turned so completely upside down, not just in terms of having a new baby around, but she's such a well-regulated child that the utter disruption of her schedule has been quite traumatic. For the eight weeks, we've done the exact same thing every day (go to campus and see Daddy while Mommy teaches, go to the library or the park after we're done, go home and have lunch and naps, wake up and have stories/playtime/go to the pool). And this week Mommy has been gone for three days, and when she reappears, it's with a little interloper in tow. So my goal this week is to really prioritize time with Abigail, especially since so much of my time right now is spent in nursing the baby that I really need to make an extra effort to do special alone things with my darling firstborn.

She's also been quite distressed by the baby's no-nos, like spitting up, urinating all over when her diaper is changed, etc. The one she's having a really hard time with is seeing the baby nurse; yesterday she looked over and was absolutely horrified, ran over, grabbed Juliet's head and said "NO BABY! NO! Don't bite Mommy! No no! Bad, bad, bad!" Unfortunately, of course, we had to reprimand her for jerking the baby's head around, so I felt awful trying to explain to her that she couldn't bite people, but Juliet sort of could, that she shouldn't try to protect her beloved mommy at the expense of the baby, etc. It was just not fun. I wanted to cry for poor Abigail.

But she's also quite affectionate. Whenever Juliet cries she immediately drops what she's doing and asks "What's wrong, baby?" She asks to kiss Juliet goodnight when she goes down for a nap or to bed, and she very tenderly covers her up with her blankie when it gets kicked off or wipes away the bubbles from Juliet's mouth.

Last night we went to the mall so that I could get some new shirts (thanks to my wonderful parents, aunt and uncle, and grandparents!) as the majority of my purchased-in-high-school wardrobe is dying a slow and ugly death; moreover, the things I've bought since then are all business attire, so I have a closet full of lovely things appropriate for teaching but not much that's appropriate to wear as a mommy other than T-shirts. Which are fine and good in their place, and I adore T-shirts anyway, but it's nice to not feel grubby if someone comes over unexpectedly or feel like I need to change into something else if we leave for playgroup or visiting teaching. Anyway, I managed to buy eight shirts and a pair of pants in less than an hour, a feat due entirely to Neil's willingness to do the daddy equivalent of bullriding and manhandle the double stroller around the mall and keep both girls occupied while I raced around the racks.

After we finished at the mall, we decided to be irresponsible parents and keep Abigail up waaay past her bedtime (we were late getting to the mall because the person who had very graciously offered to bring us dinner ended up forgetting, so we didn't have anything to eat until about 7, since we were waiting hopefully (and unfortunately getting increasingly cranky from lack of food, since they had inititally planned to come by at around 5:30 so we didn't have snacktime). Fortunately my mom left us with a good stash of leftovers, and we did get a phone call this morning from the person who had forgotten, and she very thoughtfully brought us three boxes of cereal for breakfast) and go to Chick-Fil-A and use up her summer reading coupons and take advantage of their 2-for-1 milkshake deal (if you've never had a Chick-Fil-A handspun milkshake, you're really missing out. They're my absolute favorite ever, and that includes The Malt Shoppe in Provo). We didn't get home until 10:30, but I was so glad we went, because Juliet slept the entire time and Abigail was so unabashedly happy to just hang out with her "Mommy and Daddy buddies" and eat ice cream waaay past her bedtime. It was time that all three of us really needed, I think.

Anyway, we are really looking forward to a visit from my family this week--Mom and Elise came down Wednesday and gave Abigail lots of love and attention while we were still at the hospital, then Dad joined us on Friday night so we've been greatly blessed by familial love and general taking-care-of-us-ness. Mom and Rosalind are coming back tomorrow and then Elise, Dad, Mary Beth, and Ruth will be coming on Wednesday--yay! We will have to come up with a good program of events to keep us all occupied. Hmm...what projects can we put everyone to work on? ;-)