The Princess and the Pea

The Princess

The Pea

I can't possibly communicate how awesomely insane life is with these two ...but I'm going to try!

Abigail is two and one half year now, and while my original plan was to have her potty-trained by 18 months, our new goal is to keep her peeing IN the diaper instead of the bed. She only seems bothered by a wet diaper when she is in bed, at which time she removes her diaper and wets the bed. So we are now using super-tight, 24-mo-sized onesies  to prevent her from removing the diaper. However, since we only have three, and our laundry is a little behind ...imagine a 6-ft-high pile ...we have had to resort to taping the diaper on.

Abigail is really blossoming! She is talking non-stop, and her imagination is fascinating. She imagines castles and rivers where there are grocery stores and parking lots. She builds "big, Big, giant" boats and trains and houses from blocks. And she tells me the shspes, letters and colors of signs as we drive down the roads. Best of all, she loves her sister, and she tells me about it daily. 

Naomi is a pretty easy baby. She has been a very frequent nurser and has had a couple of medical challenges, but she is happy most of the time. What a joy! Her medical challenges do not scare me terribly. She has been a slow grower, and at 8 weeks is still not quite 9 lbs, but she's getting long and lean and is acting like a perfectly healthy 2-month-old! Because of her slow growth, I am having to pump and feed the extra to her by bottle after most feeds.

She has a mysterious lump on the side of her neck, for which she has had an ultrasound, lots of labs, and a day admitted to the pediatric ICU. All of the scary stuff has been ruled out, and the docs think it is muscular and resolvable.

And she has some type of allergy or sensitivity to something I am eating because her "output" isn't totally normal.

Our house is not doing nearly as well as our children! I mentioned the laundry. Our kitchen has dished piled around on the counters and is generally kind of hard to function in. I clean sections of it to cook, but it never seems done. The living room looks more like a toy box. And our bedroom is looking like a pumping room in a hospital - items of convenience near my nursing/pumping chair, baby laundry, a baby changing station, and a pack-n-play bassinet have all come to live in our room. Slowly, we will get back to the routine I had worked out before Naomi got here, but until, life is chaotic, to say the least.

The thing that has changed the most now that we have two is the amount of time I am focusing on children. Also, I have found that I am less worried about each child, and especially about the little things with Naomi. For example, the weird gurgles or odd chokes with Abigail sent us to the doctor almost twice weekly for the first month or two. With Naomi, we have only gone when they told us to come, or when a problem didn't resolve itself in a couple of weeks. I am significantly more confident in my mom-sense, and I trust my own judgement so much more! I actually feel like I know what I am doing with Naomi. Now, if I could just figure out how to do it all faster so I could clean my house!

Is this everything I thought it would be? Not even close!
It is SO much more.

More chaos for sure!
(I am wondering if I will ever recover to normal life again.)

And more passion than I could even fathom existed. I can love more passionately than I knew possible. And all in one day I can be passionately loving, protective, annoyed, afraid, and amused.

I wouldn't trade this for the world!