Learning to parent two...

Hi, everyone. It's late, and I should be in bed, but I felt like posting. Today has had its ups and downs, but we'll start with the good news first...

Drum roll, please. Evan, at the ripe, old age of 4 1/2 months, is finally napping in his own crib, without being rocked to sleep. And...at the same time, he's not being rocked to sleep at night either. And... he's going to bed at 8:00 p.m. and waking up between 7-8:30 a.m. Hallelujah! Big, big doings around here.

He'd been going down around 8:00 for a couple of weeks, but I had to hold him with a passy in his mouth until he was good and asleep, pull the plug, and then I could put him down. And napping anyplace other than the swing was still a no go. I tried putting him in the crib, awake, last week, and he just cried for an hour, so it was back to the swing.

Well, last night, he didn't want the passy, and he kept waking up and trying to get his fingers, so I thought, "Well, I'll just try putting him down awake." And it worked. And then this morning, I discovered that the baby swing was broken. At this point, I think God broke it. =) I wouldn't have tried him again in the crib so soon after the last failure. So I put him down in it today because there was nothing else to be done, and it worked!

So, that's been great! But it was still a hard day in other ways. Seth didn't get enough sleep this weekend, and neither did I, so I felt out of it and not very engaged after we did our school time this morning. He wanted a lot of attention, and it was hard for me to give it. I was grateful when he asked to go down for his nap early. And I was even more grateful when David came home early from work (it's a federal holiday). Evan napped pretty well, but when he was up, he was fussy on and off and needed a lot of holding. And it was a very gray, rainy day, and I don't like those now that I have small children.

I don't know why it came up, but David and I were casually talking today about whether or not we'd like another child. We think we might. Maybe. After Evan is a lot older. And who knows if the clinic treatment would work again anyway. And we're not even sure about that. We're basically just not sure about this at all, really, but we'd like to want to have another child. Make sense?

But as I was washing dishes, I thought to myself, "Have another child? Hah!!! You can hardly handle the two you have! There are piles of newborn clothes lying on your baby's floor that have been there for a month because you haven't dragged the appropriate bag out of the storage shed. You haven't gone through the maternity clothes you borrowed yet to return them, and you're still wearing a lot of them. You look like a slob every week at church because you have nothing to wear that fits... and you really don't care all that much because you're too tired. You never feel caught up with anything lately, and your husband works too much and is more tired than you are. There isn't enough of you to go around, and all your friends think you don't like them anymore because you don't ever call back, and you should thank God you're not trying to do serious homeschooling right now with actual curriculum and testing and stuff. Because that would be truly terrifying..."

At least I'm getting a lot out of my Bible study this year, and I'm usually managing to get that done. It's a lifeline. But I don't have time to blog about what I'm learning, even though I'd like to. Maybe one day...

So... I'm here, but I'm struggling. And I'm REALLY ready for our vacation that starts on Friday...