Today was my first day home with both kids, and I cried All. Day. Long.

Thomn walked out of the door this morning and the first silent tear slid down my cheek. In the past 5 weeks that he has been back to work, I have had mornings that I feel on top of the world and super prepared for my day, and I have also had mornings that have left me scrambling and working things out as I go.  This was the latter of the two mornings and instead of one infant at home, I had an infant and a toddler.

I have never felt like a worst mom than I did today.  In general, I feel like I am a pretty good mom.  Like everyone, there are things that I could do better, but I try pretty dang hard.  It was always the plan to have S continue going to school for a few weeks after T4 was born.  Our initial thought was that she would go for 4 weeks.  School requires a two week notice when your child’s schedule is going to change.  Every week I would delay telling them when her last day would be, until we are where we are today – at the 8-week mark.  We decided this would be her last week and that it would be part time to wean us both into the change.

I haven’t exactly been excited for this day.  I fully recognize that having a two-year-old and eight-week-old at home is a big job even on the best of days.  But trying to be prepared, I have done a fair amount of “research” and reading suggested schedules and comments from other moms.  S has a pretty good schedule already established, so I have been focusing on T4’s.  

One of the more recent schedules that I read looked something like this:

7:00am wake up

7:15am lovingly feed the baby

7:45am play and smile with the baby

9:00am baby’s first nap

10:45am wake up and dreamily look at the baby

11:30am finish feeding the baby and set the baby down while writing current blog for the day

1:00pm play with baby and put them to sleep

Etc…

This is a preview of what my day looked like:

7:11am wake up to the baby crying and a toddler crawling on my face.  Reach for Thomn and realize he is already out of bed and eating breakfast downstairs.

7:15am feed the baby upstairs while S and Thomn go downstairs

7:35am go downstairs with T4 and get S’s breakfast ready while he chirps in his bassinet

7:37am realize that nothing is prepared for the day…food, clothes, etc.

7:38am mentally try to prepare what we are going to do first

7:38am say goodbye to Thomn, feel a tear slide down my cheek

7:39am put two ponytails in a protesting toddlers hair, while forgetting what I was supposed to be planning

7:42am S asks to go outside to play

7:43am think about eating breakfast

7:44am clean up S after she declares breakfast is all done

7:45am forget about eating breakfast when S is crying because T4 is crying and she wants to be picked up, not him.

7:46am put both kids on my lap

7:47am think about calling Thomn and begging him to come home

7:48am ask S what she wants to play with first…the answer: Daddy.

7:49am let another silent tear slide down my cheek.

…

8:43am feed T4 and coax S upstairs to quietly read books in her room while I put him to bed

8:44am feel grateful for the miracle that T4 fell asleep in his crib when I put him down…try to keep S quiet as we go downstairs, and I tell her we can go outside to play

8:45am feel the sunshine on our faces and feel victorious that we are happily playing outside

9:43am hear the baby squawking on the monitor and bring S inside to get him

9:47am let a tear slide down my face as both kids are screaming for separate reasons

10:03am put T4 in my wrap and go outside with both kids

10:14am talk with a few of my neighbors when S wants to ride her car in the street.

10:15am know that I am going to have to feed T4 outside as there is no way I am going to get S to go inside

10:16am feed baby while talking to the neighbors and desperately hope that I didn’t flash anyone in the process

…

Fast forward through the day and we had a lot of crying for Daddy and a lot of crying to be on my lap.  One toddler who did not get a single minute of her normal two hour nap, and a baby that coped with being put down constantly by demanding to eat every time I picked him up. We had a few wins in there.  S and I got to play outside twice!  T4 took two naps in his crib…which isn’t really the win…the win is that it only took 30 seconds to put him down each time as I hoped S wouldn’t scream and wake him up before I got out of our room. We FaceTimed Daddy once and I managed to not full out cry and ask him to come home.

It turns out, that two kids that have pretty good schedules, means nothing when their schedules don’t align with the other one.  I’m calling bullshit on the perfect schedule I found online where you can stare lovingly at your new baby all day.  Even with just one baby at home, it isn’t always the easiest…even if it is far easier than with two!  I can’t be surprised that this is the kind of day that we had.  Thomn and I do everything together…and when I say everything, I mean it.  We play with the kids together, we clean the house together, we go shopping together…we are always together.  I felt that loss today as much as S did – every new activity that we did today, she asked for Daddy (which prompted an additional tear to fall down my face and hers).  She tested every boundary imaginable, including throwing toys at T4, which made me upset both with needing to hold the boundary…”no you cannot harm your brother”…and also with the fear that he was going to get hurt.  Cue the tears.

“She is not giving you a hard time, she is having a hard time.”  I chanted this over and over in my head today and it is something that I 100% believe. 

Tonight, as we were giving the kids a bath (together!) I kept telling Thomn that it felt like I had sunburned underneath my eyes.  It wasn’t until part way through putting T4 to bed that I realized my eyes are not sunburned…the skin below them is raw from crying.  I know that we will eventually find a rhythm to our days.  Hopefully there will by more good than bad along the way and a few less tears than today.

The sun is shining and we are outside!