Today.

(Warning - this is pretty much a bitch fest post.  A lot of "woe is me" and "poor me" and well, a spectacular pity party.  I'm feeling pretty pitiful.)

Today, life as a mom of two was fairly awful.

There were way too many tears and nearly all of them were mine.

The morning started out okay-ish.  Matthew has pretty much stopped the 5 hours at a time thing at night (that seriously blows) and seems to eat at about 1, again at 4 and then again at 6.  Nick has been doing the first feeding and then I'd do the rest... lemme tell ya, waking up after 2 hours of sleep is not fun.  I think tonight I'll do the 1st and then let Nick take the 4 am feed (you just watch, this will be the night that Matthew goes from 1 to 6).

We finally got every one assembled and out the door to take Nick to work (lemme tell ya, this one car thing also seriously blows) only to discover as Nick was about the exit the car that he'd left his work bag at home.  So back home we trotted and dropped him off to work there for the the morning, while the two littles & I headed down town to the library for the monthly puppet show.  Maybe next month we'll make it before it starts...

After we got home, I immediately sat down to nurse Matthew & Nick does the lunch for Ben.  Mid way through my feed, Nick comes in to tell me his meeting got moved to right that moment, so I'm on my own for putting Ben to bed.  Which is fine.  I handled it.  No sooner than I got Ben all tucked in and Matthew wants to eat again.  So I'm nursing Matthew, Nick gets done with his meeting and leaves for work.  No lunch break for him, I guess.

Matthew was a pill today.  I could not put him down for longer than 15 minutes at the most.  He wanted to eat nonstop (I nursed him every 40 minutes from noon to about 5 and even gave him a bottle of formula in the middle, hoping that would help... nope).

Ben was also a pill.  He didn't fall asleep for his nap til nearly 3 hours after I put him down.  Slight scare... I guess I bumped the volume dial on his monitor down to off while I was in Matthew's room nursing.  I got him laid down and was walking down the hall when I heard Ben calling for me through his door.  He'd thrown up.  I'm not 100%, but I'm pretty sure he tried to eat the band aid that was on his arm and he choked on it.  I'm so glad the worst thing to happen was vomiting on his clothes & sheets (I'm deducing this is what happened because #1 - he was not at all devastated to have thrown up, like he is when he's actually ill and #2 - I found the soggy band aid in the middle of the vomit mess.  awesome).  In the middle of cleaning that up, Matthew woke up.

Sigh.

And so went my afternoon.

And then it got worse when Nick came home and informed me he is required to be in San Jose on Monday.

To say I'm devastated and panicked is an understatement.  I am terrified to be by myself for 3 days with absolutely no help or support.  I'm sure we'll make it out alive and I know I'm not the only parent to ever deal with a toddler and a newborn at the same time, flying solo but....  I'm not at all sure how I'm going to pull this off.  Especially in the evenings, which is Matthew's witching hour.  I don't want to deal with this and I want Nick to find a new job.  Traveling, in my opinion, is now completely out of the question.  If his work can't deal with that, then he needs to find other work.

Then I bashed my toe.  This wouldn't be a big deal, but lemme tell ya a little story 'bout this toe.  About 2 weeks ago, I was hauling our patio set around the yard to clean off and list on Craiglist and I set one of the chairs down on my toe SUPER hard (it didn't break but it sure felt like it did - not bad enough that I wouldn't have been able to climb up to see Anne Frank's house, but that's another story...).  Since that day, I have smacked it on something or dropped something on it almost every day.  This poor toe...

Today wasn't all bad though:

• the puppet show was fun and it was nice to see other mommy's
• Nick got a bonus with pay day, so that was a nice (and very much needed) surprise
• we got a delicious meal delivery from another mommy friend and rice crispie treats with it (so yummy, or as Ben said "these are a-licious!")
• on the way home from the library, Matthew started to throw a fit.  Ben said "calm down, brudder, calm down" and I told Ben Matthew was just hungry, to which Ben informed Matthew that he'd just have to wait.  Then I asked what did Matthew eat and Ben said "chickens!" and I said "noooo" and Ben said "milk!" and I said, "that's right!" and Ben said "from your boo boos!"  ha ha that kid cracks me up
• park play this evening, where Ben got to talk to a policeman and SIT IN a police car - so cool!

Wish me luck next week....