On My Own

This is the first week since the baby has been born that I have been totally on my own. My cousin is no longer coming down to help out with work, and my mom and step dad have been in Carmel on a little much-deserved getaway. So it has just been me and the kids so far this week.

The things I have done well with: The Boy has successfully gotten to school every day. He is getting there a little later than he usually does, but he is making it to school. This is a good thing.

Both children have been bathed on their appropriate days (they each get a bath every other day and I rotate the days so that each day is a bath day for one of them) and are not stinky, scary children.

I have successfully kept everyone fed. Dinnertime is a scary time and without my Mommy here to help out I was worried that The Boy and I would not ever get a real meal. But I did well. I even managed to get us somewhat healthy meals. On Monday night we had pork tenderloin with broccoli and fresh fruit and last night we had a Chinese chicken salad with fresh fruit. And going along with that, The Boy got his medicine and vitamins each night. AND the kitchen got cleaned up and dishes all done both nights. So mealtime has been much better than I had anticipated.

The house does not look like a disaster area. Everything has been cleaned up and kept in order and I have even managed to do about three or four loads of laundry during the last couple of days.

The girl has been kept alive and kicking. Really all this requires is my boob every two to three hours during the day and making sure to get enough sleep so that I don't accidentally forget about her. But her diapers have been changed, she's gone through approximately two to three outfits a day and she is snoozing next to me in the bassinet as I type, so I think I did good with her.

The only thing I would say that I didn't do so great on is working. It is tough to get any work done with all of the above activities. On Monday I was able to bill for about three or four hours of work (my grandmother had to come over to watch The Girl while I went out to a client for the first time since I had the baby), which is decent, but certainly not a full day. Yesterday I was only able to bill for about 2 hours total. I didn't have anyone come over to watch the baby and then in the afternoon I was exhausted after a particularly crappy night with the baby the night before. So instead of focusing on work, I blatantly focused on getting a good nap. Priorities, I guess. :)

Overall I think we did pretty good on our own. My mom is coming back today and will pick The Boy up from school and bring him to me and probably give him a bath. But they have dinner plans so we are on our own for dinner again. But I can handle it. We are slowly getting into a routine. It is tough and exhausting, but I can handle my two kids on my own. I am getting to the point where I am actually looking forward to going back to work Monday through Thursday and getting into a routine. It is hard trying to do it all; Mommy to a newborn, and also trying to be efficient and get some work done during the day. It's tough to have to switch back and forth between those two roles. But we are finding our way. And it is a wonderful journey to have to go on.

Here is a picture of "Big Brother" and "Little Sister" that I gave to my Dad for Father's Day. I am broke right now so I threw a white blanket over the bean bag and put the kids on there and snapped away trying to get a decent picture. Of course all the pictures where The Boy looked good, The Girl didn't and all the pictures where she looked cute, he looked like a moron. So this was the best option and the one we went with...